Back to Beginnings
by Lang Noi
Summary: WIP. When Obito Uchiha died at the age of thirty, he figured that would be the end of it. He'd never been so wrong in all of his lives. Time loops, AU, crossover, mood whiplash, insanity and inanity. Rooted in the Promise-verse AU.
1. Prologue Part One

Uchiha Obito is many things.

_Traitor, lover, friend, foe, widower, comrade, brother, father, cousin, guardian, angel, demon, martyr, **monster**—_

Many more things, in the vastness of time and possibility. The seeds of a life are planted long before the whole person _is_, spinning threads out into the future and the past like a cosmic spider, lines like golden silk in the present and the _perhaps_, in the _could-be_ and _has-been _all bound up in fate and the march of worlds. It is beautiful and terrible in its complexity and expanse.

Obito (_crybaby loser failure_) is thirteen years old. _He's given everything he has but it's not enough and now at least Kakashi has that eye of his and by the merciful kami he hopes it will be enough because there isn't anything else he can **do** when he's trapped like this and dying by inches and he wishes he could do more to keep them **safe**_

Obito (_headstrong loyal jounin of Konoha_) is thirty. _He won't let that bastard take anyone else from him not when there's still so much they need to live to see Kamui has to last long enough for some kind of reinforcement Sensei anyone at least someone's going to see tomorrow even if it won't be him and he **refuses**_ _to regret a single instant of this jutsu that's killing him because dying like this in the defense of someone he loves is a better death than he could have asked and if he's lucky they'll find a way past the Six Paths and he'll save someone **anyone**_

Obito is thirteen-going-on-thirty. _I don't want to die/I'll take him with me if it **kills me**_

Obito (_Please, protect Rin where I can't anymore._) wants to live and protect the people he loves. _I'll be watching out for you, Kakashi._

Obito (_Come on, come on, just gotta hold on a bit longer…_) dies doing just that. _Damn… I couldn't even take one of them out…_

* * *

**_Would you like to play a game?_**

* * *

Obito Uchiha is thirteen years old, and he has just gained his Sharingan and Mangekyou soul-scars in an instant. He looks up at an achingly familiar night sky, stars spread across the sky in a silvery silken blanket, and listens to the gentle, patient murmur of Sensei's voice as the pain of the past is laid out before him. All the while, his hands shake as though they belong to a far older man and his eyes sting with remembered pain.

He will get no sleep tonight.

Neither will the spinners of fate's grand design, seeing the loom _crack_ and the cloth _burn._ The threads of fate are loose and fragmented without a guide, and the greater weave of history _trembles_.

* * *

**_GAME START_**

* * *

He's nearly thirty. He's Uchiha Obito, married to one Nohara Rin, and is a happy if somewhat flustered uncle/brother figure in a family built and thriving on improvisations and chaos. He and Kakashi are the oldest (well, technically, Obito's about seven months older than Kakashi and has mentioned this rather a lot over the years, but no one cares) boys, Rin the oldest girl. Iruka comes next, if reluctantly, and then Itachi and the brats. Sasuke, Naruto. Four months apart, closer than peas in a pod (or possibly magnets, which reflected their natures better). Minato and Kushina—Sensei and Kushina-san—are the sometimes-proud parents to what amounts more to a pack than a family, but it's theirs. All of theirs. They built it with their own hands and _made_ it work where people said it shouldn't, made Konoha stronger with their bonds and their blood. And he loves—loved—all of them so much that sometimes he thinks—thought—that his heart would burst of it. They live and breathe and fight and die for one another, closer than blood in many ways, and now Obito thinks that he's just the first to drop dead.

He didn't expect to outlive Kakashi. Maybe that's why the last thing he remembers is _pain of the heart _and a surge of power through his veins and chakra coils like heat through a wire and feeling his eyes _burn_ and realizing that he had the power to _stall_ even someone as dangerous as Pain. Kamui against Shinra Tensei, the image of Kakashi's head pinned to the wall by a black stake through his head (_NO NO NO NO **NO**_)—all imbedded in his mind as though someone had carved it in with a kunai. In some ways, he's surprised he even lasted long enough to realize how utterly screwed he was, past the red haze of rage.

He's not sure he survived. Looking at his hands, calloused only by training and the occasional smooth burn from an exhaled fireball, he wonders what kind of genjutsu he must be in if he didn't. The feel of his chakra and the movements of his body tell him that whatever happened, he's weakened and vulnerable in this form, and he can't quite figure out how to fight when he should be thirty centimeters taller than this.

He has to spend at least two hours just to reflect on how much he's lost by waking up in Kusa. He spends some of it trying to dispel the genjutsu that _has_ to be there—a subtly activated Sharingan that makes his eyes ache, "accidentally" jabbing himself with a kunai (which gets him an eye-rolling from this smaller clone of Kakashi, worry from Rin, and some questioning glances from Sensei) and brief flares of his chakra intended to just dispel it. None of this new world changes.

A quick glance at his team—Sensei, Rin-chan, Kakashi—feels like a clawed fist tightening around his heart.

He can't look at Kakashi.

(_red red blood splashed against the silver and cream and blue and he's never seen so much of his friend's face and he can't **look** but he has to because this is all he'll have because the breathing's caught up with his brain and there's nothing and he **hates** this and all there's left to do is **fight**_)

Can't look at Rin.

(_oh kami he has no idea where she is she could have been in the hospital where's Tsunade-sama that bastard flattened the whole district with one shove how are we going to get people **out** where's Rin-chan **where's Rin-chan** where's his Rin the hospital's gone gone **gone**_)

Can't look at Sensei.

(_Sensei please where are you why aren't you here what did he do to Kushina-san please everyone's gone we can't hold on **where are you**_)

Obito pulls his old goggles (_hasn't seen them in years/seconds_) down and closes his eyes, relying on his semi-developed chakra sense to tell where he's going by the movement of his teammates, and quietly curses the Sharingan in all its forms. He doesn't want to remember any of it, but it's his reality and the Sharingan won't let him forget until he's dead for real. This—whatever it is—is not real. Can't be.

Because if it is, he has no idea what he's going to do.

He just wants to find a rock to hide under until the world starts making _sense_ again.

(_okay Kakashi's okay we're almost out ohhhhhhh shit_)

…Or maybe not, in reflection. _Where did that come from? _He wonders, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off a wave of phantom pain. For a moment, it's like there's a terrible weight trying to flatten him into a piece of paper, along with a creeping numbness that speaks less of loss of pain than loss of sensation altogether, but it passes in a moment.

…_I did not get anything **like** enough sleep last night_. More sleep (or, failing that, coffee) sounds like an excellent idea, but there isn't any time to relax in territory that's infested with Iwa-nin.

From the remarkably complaint-free silence he only becomes aware of as they start to approach their destination, he's pretty sure his team thinks he's had some kind of psychotic break. If he's got the timing right (which is only a possibility—he gained his Sharingan _later_ in this mission, after all), he'd probably frozen up when they'd fought the jounin from Iwa with all the kage bunshin. And gotten a decent chewing-out, considering. Then there'd been the conversation about the Hatake he never got to meet—emulating the man is fine in any time period, he thinks—that he'd zoned out in the middle of.

Shock explains some stuff, but he's going to have to make better excuses than ever in his life if he plans on keeping this up.

He supposes that he's lucky in having Kakashi for a friend for so long, even if it all turned to shit at the very end—Kakashi is, and has pretty much always been, a pretty good liar (_mostly to himself, the selfish bastard_). Picking it up from him had been almost like breathing. Putting it into practice…less so. But then, Obito was kind of used to not being believed. There had to be a way to apply that in reverse.

Still. For now, he's keeping his goggles on, his Sharingan hidden behind plastic and subtle genjutsu, and following along with this strange script. He needs more to know what the hell he _can_ do in this body, and the weird twist of his chakra coils (_man, is he out of shape or what_) tells him less than he'd like.

Assuming he lives through this again, he's training his ass off. He feels like he's been in the hospital for a _month_.

Though, since he's about six months from his first major teenage growth spurt (if he has his math right, and he freely admits in his own head that he could easily be wrong), at least the issue of differential heights won't be a problem for too long. He started and stopped growing sooner than Kakashi did—which, for right now, means that he had the reach to take out Iwa-nin just the hairsbreadth faster that might make the difference. The Iwa jounin he remembers had been no joke (even if they _were_ stupidly overconfident—but then, who ever expected the Sharingan to randomly come into play?), though he isn't sure if that would stay the same in the face of his extra experience. And that experience gives him an edge on more than just them, he thinks with a glance at Kakashi.

Kami, if he'd gone up against Pain and lasted more than an minute after the Rinnegan-using bastard had decided he ought to be dead, a couple of chameleons would be _cake_.

Sensei doesn't say anything to indicate that he thinks something is wrong. Maybe he can't afford do. When they're all so close to Iwa (even if most of what Obito sees at the moment is Kusa's distinctive grassy plain), a teammate cracking could lead to discovery—and shortly thereafter, panic, confusion, and probably death—and they can't even afford to acknowledge it until they get back to Konoha. Besides, it's not like Obito would have gone with Sensei instead if he had a choice. His place is with Kakashi and Rin—hopefully keeping them alive through this gauntlet to adulthood.

It's easy for him to deal with Kakashi being in command now. Maybe it's because he has the benefit of something like hindsight—there are all sorts of details off and he's still wondering where Nariko and Momo got to—or just because all he can see is a white-haired kid trying to prove himself just as much as Obito had been at the time. Kid's a genius, sure, but Obito has sixteen years on him in his head.

Youth and talent will never trump old age and treachery.

_Even if this time it's just sixteen years—about one and a half **shinobi** generations, unless you're going back to the Clan Wars era. Kakashi's been combat-ready since he was what, five? And I made genin at nine. Sheesh…_

It's weird how, the more he thinks about it, the less it hurts. Not a lot, granted, and he thinks there's going to be a deep, dark pit inside his head for a long time (_love hate fear longing_), the kind that even bijuu would stay the fuck away from and he's hanging onto sanity by his fingertips, but he can go _around_ it. It'll take effort but he can train himself to do it, since he has to.

He's looking away from Rin because he can't quite do it, yet, with his hands behind his head and Sharingan spinning behind his goggles and genjutsu. It's the only reason he sees the bastards this time around.

It's almost sad how obvious it is with his eyes like this. If he had a Hyuuga take a look, he suspects it'd be pretty close to what he's seeing now, but with chakra circulatory systems and maybe skeletons instead of the "let's play the indecisive chameleon" game he's got. He suspects that the Iwa-nin here have literally no experience with Uchiha clan members with active Sharingan eyes.

He waits.

And when Taiseki (_why does he remember this so well he hasn't seen a bingo book from the Third Shinobi World War in years_) leaps up to confront them with Kakkou (_sometimes having the Sharingan sucks_), and in doing so cancels the camouflage genjutsu (_Meisaigakure no jutsu argh argh he is never going to get this out of his head_), Obito's hands are already flashing through his favorite seals and chakra is gathering in his lungs and throat.

Kakashi pulls Rin clear, thank the merciful kami, because the chakra he's gathered is at least double what they used to use in practice and, though he hasn't mentioned it, this particular variant of the technique is a little harder to avoid than usual. Obito remembers spending weeks on this, once upon a time.

_Katon: Gokakyuu no jutsu (Uzu)_.

He doesn't think there's an Uchiha alive who's managed to make their fireball into a deadly spiral of heat bloom and open flame, because no one bothers to refine the coming-of-age technique any more than their teachers' teachers had. Obito, during a fit of jutsu-creation born of his then-strong rivalry with Kakashi, had been determined to prove them wrong.

(_he'd failed of course but that was never the point_)

So when Obito can still see and sense both of their chakra signatures, he's somewhat disappointed, though not as much as he is in his chakra capacity. _This is like diving into a swimming pool and finding out too late that the water's a foot deep._

Seriously, screw these guys.

Taiseki goes after him first, while Kakkou apparently decides that his variation on today's theme (_whack the Konoha-nin_) is to pick on Kakashi.

Well, Obito might not have his old chakra capacity, but his control is much tighter than it used to be. He can make use of what he has far more effectively than even a jounin—this, though, is another thing he chalks up to the Sharingan. It's easier to perceive the flow of chakra when you can actually _see_ it move, in addition to feeling it. Rin had helped.

Taiseki's face twists when Obito successfully blocks his kunai without losing an inch of ground (_why does this battle need to be fought on top of a pond_) thanks to this chakra reinforcement, rather than dodging or panicking. And that's when Taiseki makes the mistake of looking Obito in the eye.

_You're getting veeeeeeery sleepy…_

Obito's specialty is not genjutsu, despite the subtle layering bullshit he can pull off with his Sharingan and a lot of luck (_he's still not sure he's fooled Sensei_). But the Sharingan gives him that last crucial edge he needs over a jounin and he takes it, dropping Taiseki straight into Stage Four sleep with no resistance whatsoever. That's about when he launches his trailing foot off the surface of the pond and reinforces his kick with enough chakra that he temporarily numbs his leg from the ankle down.

(_take it easy it might be war but you're still a kid_)

Taiseki goes flying from a roundhouse to the lower jaw, though, which makes it all worth it. Kakkou has to break off from Kakashi in order to make sure his teammate doesn't break every bone in his body on landing. _That _proves that he can still fight effectively, even in this body.

The flailing and mandatory retreat to the water's edge before he drops into the pond due to miscalculating the amount of chakra his limbs can channel, on the other hand, doesn't. _Twenty-odd years of being a shinobi and still making genin mistakes. Clearly, I am an S-class ninja. Fear me_. He lands hard on his rear, more annoyed than surprised, and really, really wants to get back into the fight and nail Kakkou to a bamboo stalk before he can hurt Kakashi or Rin when he comes back.

On the other hand, he thinks as Rin immediately gets to work on his chakra-numb limb, maybe it's best to keep holding back. _Better look like an idiot than a genius, I guess_.

"I'm thinking Iwa jounin." Obito says, catching both of his teammates' attention since it's about the first thing he's said all day. That said, their stares are kind of awkward and he has to stop himself from automatically trapping one of them in a genjutsu by looking past them. "Rin-chan? Kakashi? Am I the only one doing this assessing thing?"

Given that he can only see about half of Kakashi's face at any given moment, he's somewhat surprised to note that the little jounin's expression can best be described as "huffy." He has officially known this guy (_kid kid he's just a kid_) for way too long. The little "hn," which has not been a word in the history of the universe and no one is going to manage to convince him otherwise despite overuse (_Kakashi Sasuke Neji Yamato does he attract these idiots or something_), does not help his mood.

"Don't give me that look, you asshole." Obito snaps, finally feeling like he's getting back into the flow of things. This? This is _cake_. It also helps that shouting is keeping him from laughing. _This is way too familiar and I don't have time for this_. He glances at Rin, and notices that yes, he can flex his toes again without feeling pins and needles. "Thanks, Rin-chan."

Then they're all back on their feet, senses extended outward to find the Iwa jounin. Kakashi's posture changes, from wary to quarter-second-from-murder and Obito's hidden Sharingan sees Taiseki—apparently snapped out of the genjutsu already, to his annoyance—surge toward them like an avalanche behind a waterfall. Kakkou is smarter and faster, but Obito's hands are already most of the way through another sequence of seals even if this choice is not exactly suited for the moment.

In hindsight, they should have drilled on hand-seals religiously, but Rin's techniques don't require seals and Kakashi seems more inclined to stab than flash-fry people at the moment. _Rat, tiger, dog, ox, rabbit, tiger, monkey. _

One solution to invisible opponents (_he can see them perfectly well but no one else can_) is area-of-effect attacks. Luckily, he knew the seals for this even when he was eleven, so he's pretty sure he can even pull off his modified version without trouble. Still charging chakra in his lungs and throat, he reaches into his shuriken pouch and pulls out all fifteen of them.

Pity he's not going to get his shuriken back after this.

_Katon: Housenka Tsumabeni_.

And like that, blazing metal rains down on the enemy positions. This technique isn't as powerful as he'd like—he's working with a thirteen-year-old's chakra coils, after all, but it's worth it to see the enemy panic at the realization that the fire is not going out. _Suck on that, Iwa bastards_.

It's times like this when Obito thinks, _Sometimes, I wish I had more Raiton techniques that **aren't** Chidori variants._ Side effect of a secondary Earth affinity, and of spending too much time training with Kakashi as his only sparring partner not named Gai (_is he still supposed to dislike this guy for kicking his ass in his first two Chuunin Exams or not_). He doesn't know any Raiton techniques he can justify using in that nebulous period before his Sharingan activated anyway, and overcoming Iwa-nin usage of Douton is a totally different and _extremely relevant_ issue.

He thinks he'll learn to get very, very tired of people shrugging off his attempts to kill them.

Kakashi, meanwhile, proves himself willing to take Taiseki apart by inches even when flaming shuriken are pretty much everywhere if he has to, with Rin as support with her chakra scalpels (_is she literally hacking at his shins what kind of weird alternate universe have I dropped into_). He feels the flow of chakra as Kakkou uses some kind of Douton jutsu to split the fight down the middle, water and bedrock and gravel exploding underneath all of their feet and forcing Obito back toward the bank.

And, just like before, Rin's on one side with the two Iwa-nin and Kakashi and Obito are on the other (_dammit not again why does this always have to happen to Rin he'll KILL THEM_).

No snappy one-liners, this time. Just another smoke bomb.

For a long moment, Obito and Kakashi stand there and pant. Jounin taking them seriously hadn't been a part of the plan, not really, and they still had the bridge to destroy and now Rin's gone and Obito is seriously considering going on an epic journey to find the manifestation of Fate and kicking it/him in the balls. Failing that, stabbing in the face works just fine.

He deactivates his Sharingan, along with the genjutsu over his eyes, and pushes his goggles up onto his hitai-ate. He doesn't want to accidentally hit Kakashi with a genjutsu, since he seems to be misfiring a lot or at least _thinking_ he's about to, which is a bad thing. He hates being thirteen.

"We're going back for Rin." Obito says, in a flat tone that's nothing like how he would have said it if he really had been his physical age. This still feels like the right choice—though the tone of command hasn't ever really worked on Kakashi. He doesn't want to have to argue about this, but he's also not sure Kakashi has enough of a conscience at this age to actually listen.

"The two of us will continue our mission, Obito."

Kakashi was _such an asshole_ at age thirteen. What did he even say last time to make Kakashi at least consider second-guessing himself?

Kami, just listening to this kid is making him wonder, vaguely, how the hell he's supposed to grow up into the laid-back White Wolf of Konoha he knows (_knew_) so well. Obito isn't really familiar with growing old, having never actually managed such a feat (_hey Kakashi we're getting a bit over the hill aren't we_), but listening to Kakashi—new jounin, barely a teenager, still-incomplete Chidori and a voice that still cracks—makes him feel _ancient._

The worst part is that Kakashi's looking at him with the same eyes. (_have to follow orders the mission is paramount can't dishonor anyone else won't let them can't fail_)

Obito wonders what Kakashi sees in his (_he won't let a single comrade die_). "No. Maybe this is something you won't do, with what happened to your dad" —and it almost hurts to say it, when his words bring that _haunted_ look to Kakashi's eyes— "but I can't leave Rin to face two jounin on her own." His smile isn't quite false. It's complicated. "The White Fang was a hero, and screw whatever anyone else said. And I'm gonna follow his example here, even if you can't, because that's who I am."

"And if she's dead? If she's already given up the information they want?" Kakashi challenges him, because it's a perfectly reasonable point and Obito's simultaneously way past this and yet in the moment. "Then Iwa gets to keep the bridge intact and the war will drag on for _years_." Kakashi was born in the wake of the Second Great Shinobi War. Now they're neck-deep in the third one. He _knows_.

"I believe in Rin." Obito says simply, because he knows from experience Rin is strong. "But if you think for a second that I'll stand around twiddling my thumbs when they're trying to use her to hurt Konoha, you're an idiot."

Kakashi says, in that infuriatingly flat voice, "I'm still captain. You still have to obey my orders. No matter what happens, the decisions are still in my hands. And we're continuing the mission." It's weird how this argument doesn't make Obito want to punch his lights out. Maybe it's because he knows he actually _could_. "Obito, you haven't got any special talent, which is why I'm capta—"

Stomping on all of Kakashi's personal buttons seems like a bad idea, but he can't stop. One of the minor ones is being interrupted. And it's complete bullshit that he doesn't have any talent—he's just hiding pretty much all of it at the moment. "It's true that in the shinobi world, those who break the rules and regulations are called trash." Obito admits softly, still refusing to face his teammate because it's harder to remember if he does. His Sharingan throbs. He _knows_ Kakashi gave him this stupid speech the other day, because there's no reason he wouldn't. Pity it's been years from his perspective since Kakashi was this much of a pain. Obito takes a deep breath. "But you know what? The most worthless rat bastard on the face of the world is the one who ditches his friends and calls it 'necessary evil.' If that's what being a ninja is, screw that because I'm doing this _my_ way."

Obito tilts his head, feeling oddly serene for the first time since "waking up." "So, if you wanna come with, I'm open to having a jackass of a friend helping out. But I'm going after them no matter what." He's gotten better at twisting words over the years. "So, it's still your decision, captain."

(_if he thinks he can be ordered around he's got another thing coming_)

It's not just because of Obito's Sharingan eyes that he can guess at what Kakashi's thinking. He's known the man for most of his life, growing up together like the idiots they both are—fighting (_mostly with each other_), living, succeeding. That's why he can tell Kakashi's afraid, not because of any special kekkei genkai. Kakashi's been a shinobi for eight years already, and up until now he's been shoving everyone away because he's convinced they'll leave—either voluntarily or through death. He drives people away to preempt any more pain and the only voluntary exception to that so far is Sensei, if only because everyone thinks their sensei is invincible.

Kakashi is just starting to realize that his teammates have wormed their way into his heart, without him noticing a thing. And it's sinking in slowly, like ice melting into freezing water. It terrifies him.

"Later, _captain_." Obito says, and turns to leave. "We'll pick this up later if we both survive the next few hours."

A kunai shoots past his face, barely missing his ear on the way, and Obito knows that he's definitely got Kakashi's attention. Kakashi's fist crashes into his shoulder a second later, spinning him around and to the ground with the force of the impact, and Obito has to fight down a grin. He turns to face Kakashi, expression locked into a scowl, and they glare at each other for a moment before Kakashi roughly yanks him back to his feet.

"Then take this as an order, soldier." Kakashi says harshly, "_We _are going to rescue Rin and we're _all_ going to make those Iwa-nin regret putting a bridge up over the Kannabi. Or so help me I will make your life _hell_."

_Nice to have you at my back again, Wolf. _

"What's with all the drama? It was my idea!" Obito protests, but it's not serious. He lets the scowl slide off his face, replaced by determination. "Kakashi, let me lead the way. My Sharingan"—and here, he blinks and the three-tomoe form of his eyes makes the world simultaneously clearer and somehow _unreal_—"activated in that last battle, and I can see through their genjutsu. Trust me."

Kakashi nods curtly. Then they leap among the bamboo thickets and in pursuit of their enemies.

As it happens, Taiseki is a total pushover when it comes to round two. Kakashi leaves him entirely to Obito, who waits until the Iwa-nin is too close to dodge and promptly blasts him point-blank with _Katon: Housenka Tsumabeni_. Sure, that's Kakashi's entire stock of shuriken gone, but it's also a dead Iwa jounin, which is going up there on Obito's personal tally of foes killed with a single jutsu.

Next up is Kakkou. The remaining Iwa jounin is smart enough to be a threat, but Obito's lived through this once already and pulls Gai's taijutsu out of his memory for all that it happened a lifetime ago and he doesn't have the training for it just yet. Kakashi's fast enough to keep up and Obito _will not_ allow Kakkou to lay a single finger on his teammate even if it means he can't use his arms. When the Iwa jounin collapses, Obito follows up by imbedding a kunai in his skull. And he doesn't turn his back on the corpse until he's sure it wasn't a bunshin or the subject of a Kawarimi.

He does not want to deal with a cave-in again. Especially since this time there's no Nariko to make the dash for safety.

Then Obito finally goes to make sure Rin is okay, if still under genjutsu. Dispelling that is easy enough, and Kakashi takes care of the ropes.

"Let's get the hell out of here." Obito mutters in an undertone as Rin gets back to her feet. Kakashi glances at him. "Captain."

"Right. Move out, team."

It's never that easy.

Even the first time around, there'd been a crowd of some fifteen Iwa-nin waiting for them when they emerged from the cave. He supposes that it's too much to ask that they _wouldn't_ show up when his world is repeating itself. He's still somewhat annoyed that Nariko and Momo haven't made an appearance yet, blasting enemy ninjas with fox fire and stupid one-liners.

They're outside. They're completely surrounded.

Obito's Sharingan spins (_round and round we go where we stop nobody knows_) and he holds his hand out to Kakashi for a kunai. Rin is behind them, chakra scalpels flaring because if nothing else they're going down fighting and she doesn't intend to be taken alive. Kakashi pulls his father's chakra saber from its scabbard and drops his kunai holster into Obito's grasp with his free hand.

Obito pulls out Sensei's Hiraishin kunai and lets it fly. If this doesn't work it's going to be a bloodbath.

Luckily, it does.

Technically, they don't actually need to help because the Iwa-nin are in a panic and Sensei is killing them left and right. Technicalities are not about to stop them now.

Rin cuts the tendons of a fleeing Iwa-nin with one feather-light touch of her glowing hands, and Sensei leaps and lands on the man's back hard enough to break it. Obito's plethora of fiery techniques box the enemy in and Sensei kills two of them at once, a kunai in each hand. Kakashi's chakra saber makes him almost as much of a threat to them as Sensei is (_every fight with Sensei ends at zero range and a single **slice**_) and between them the rest of the Iwa-nin go down screaming.

And then it's over.

Obito finally deactivates his Sharingan, lungs burning. Between the Katon jutsu and the chakra toll of an active Sharingan and the multiple taijutsu matches and a few spare genjutsu, he wants to collapse into a bed and sleep for a week. This body doesn't have the chakra or fitness level he's used to—frankly, a sustained firefight wouldn't have been his first option then _either_, but he'd also have been capable of pulling off a bastardized version of what Sensei just did if he was still an adult.

(_suspicion worry what is his problem not paranoia so fast_)

Obito blinks and Sensei is crouching in front of him. His expression is unreadable and when the weight of his hand settles on his shoulder, Obito starts to unintentionally lean in that direction. It feels a little like the world is sliding sideways and he can't bring himself to care. Sensei immediately tries to steady him, but Obito realizes that the only explanation is chakra exhaustion and he's going to need a minute to get his brain back into working order.

_Come on, come on, there has to be chakra left or I wouldn't still be awake_. He closes his eyes and tries to focus, pushing chakra _away_ from his eyes so his Sharingan will stay inactive for a while and stop being a chakra sink, but it's really a jolt of purified chakra from Rin that brings him back to awareness.

"Thanks, Rin-chan. Needed that." He doesn't need to fake the embarrassment in his face or his tone. He should really know better than to push himself that hard on a mission, whether Sensei was around or not.

He still staggers when Sensei tries to get him back on his feet, though. He's always been a bit unsteady after stuff like this, no matter his physical age. His chakra feels deadened and tired, to match the rest of him, and he leans heavily on Sensei despite the fact that he really feels like he ought to be at least able to walk away from this kind of fight (_should have would have could have_).

"…So what's this I hear about you finally activating your Sharingan?" Sensei says, and it sounds like it's coming from somewhere far, far away.

"…Were you saying something before?" Obito asks blankly. Rin looks worried and Kakashi looks like he might be worried if he was more expressive. _Bah_. "I think I kinda zoned out there…"

"Oh, just general congratulations since you seem to have done well." Sensei says, and his voice sounds clearer the longer he talks. Neat. "Want to hear your part?"

"Sure." Obito says, distantly.

"Obito, in going to rescue Rin and keep the Iwa-nin from hurting your teammates, you've done your whole village proud." Sensei grins, and Obito's attempt to return it is probably a little weak. "Though the next time something like this happens, try to keep a closer _eye_ on your chakra levels so I don't have to carry you back to Konoha."

Obito snorts. "Sure thing, Sensei." Wait, had there been a bit of extra emphasis on the word "eye?" The little thrill of excitement gives him enough energy to stand on his own and attempt a victory pose. So what if it's just a thumbs-up? "Sensei, I awoke my Sharingan! I did it!"

"So I heard. Straight to three tomoe?"

_Oops. Busted._

"Well, it was really more like two in each for a bit." Obito says. This is, strictly speaking, true. Just stretching the timeframe like a rubber band, since it took him six months and a mission against Taki to get three tomoe last time around. "Kept the whole thing under wraps with a genjutsu since, you know, it's better to surprise enemy shinobi with something like that the first time."

This is bullshit. He'd been more worried about his team's reaction than anything—the Sharingan was the kind of kekkei genkai that would be activated under stress regardless, and he'd needed it active and hidden to compensate for his body's current condition. Specifically, the problem of being thirteen years old again.

"And it evolved in the fight?" Sensei asks. His tone doesn't reveal a single thing. _Dammit_.

"Well, during a fight you weren't around for, yeah. Ask Captain Kakashi, he was there for all of it." Obito says with a shrug.

"Since when do you call Kakashi 'captain'?" Sensei asks, glancing at the other jounin briefly. Kakashi is rolling his eyes.

"Since I learned it'd piss him off." Obito replies easily. "Still, it worked, didn't it, captain?"

Kakashi grumbles something inaudible. Obito sticks his tongue out at him and ducks the inevitable attempt to punch him in the face. And then he tackles Kakashi to the ground. Sure, he's running on very little chakra and Kakashi's a jounin, but Obito has six centimeters and quite a bit of arm span on him for right now and neither of them are actually trying to kill each other. It probably doesn't look like it to outsiders, though.

(_blood brother lover teacher comrades family **home**_)

He thinks it's going to be okay.

It's never that easy.

When Rin dies, he thinks he's going to follow her.

He's never really thought about all the close calls he _knows_ they'd had over the years, even after arriving in a past free of youkai interference that somehow follows the greater trends he remembers. He and Kakashi are friends now, and Rin seemed to have been sorting out her crush on Kakashi (which he doesn't mind this time, because she's so _young_ and Obito can't actually remember what it would have been like to have a crush like that anymore). He's getting stronger, more used to his new (_old_) body's capabilities. Sensei is Hokage. The war is winding down.

He'd just never thought that Kiri could come back to bite them so thoroughly.

There's no way to call Sensei. There's no kitsune daiyoukai or immortal miko to help them calm the raging Sanbi long enough to get home. No secret Hiraishin seals. There's no backup. They're surrounded again, but this time it's Kiri ANBU and they're miles from anything like a border. There's no way out, until Rin finds hers at the end of Kakashi's Chidori.

Obito doesn't remember the next five minutes even though he _knows_ his Mangekyou Sharingan activated and the way the corpses litter the ground afterward tell him that he activated Kamui fifteen times in the fight and every strike was a kill. He remembers, mechanically, sealing Rin's body into a transportation scroll and picking Kakashi up and starting the journey home via Kamui's shadow dimension, even if he can't remember the details of any of it. It wouldn't have worked before—all he really understood about Kamui was the ability to cut someone else's limbs off via misplaced portal, and he hadn't used it since its initial activation some months beforehand. He hadn't understood that there was a way _out_.

Kakashi tells him her last words, while he's in the hospital for chakra exhaustion. _Take care of each other for me_. He doesn't remember hearing them, but it's so _Rin_ that he breaks down and cries there in the recovery ward. He doesn't check to see if Kakashi's crying too, but he's not making fun of him and that's enough.

Obito sits in his room the day after her funeral, staring at the tantou he bought as a birthday present he never got to give her, and lets the thoughts slide together until something pings off of some other important idea. He's not in any hurry.

Eventually, he stands. He has shit to do. Funeral to attend (_Rin was an orphan too we were her family_), teammates to visit.

He gets dressed in funeral black, for what seems like the millionth time this year. Sensei and Kakashi are the only ones he's interested in seeing, even if he knows that their old classmates are probably going to attend if they can. He tucks the tantou into a scabbard and slings its strap over his wrist. He ties it on, slower and more carefully than he would otherwise, and heads out.

He picks up flowers from the Yamanaka shop. He visits Kakashi in the hospital and finds Sensei signing the release forms to get him out early (_perks of being Hokage_). He ends up splitting the bouquet with them since they obviously haven't been able to get any of their own—Sensei gets chrysanthemums and Kakashi takes the lilies. Obito keeps the asphodel and marigolds. There are roses, too, but they're for whoever else ends up coming. The stuff with meaning—and sometimes he wonders how Inoichi _knew_—is for their team alone.

It doesn't rain, but it's cold.

Sensei carves her name into the stone, while Kakashi and Obito place flowers. Obito has a picture of their whole team together on the day of team assignments, sealed into his Kamui dimension, and brings it out in full view of his cohort despite whatever they'll say anyway. He places it at the base of the stone with incense and his marigolds and asphodel. He leaves the tantou there, too, as a silent apology (_should have been stronger faster better_).

In the end, it's over all too quickly. The crowd breaks off with some general condolences and Sensei has to leave to get back to work, because the world doesn't stop spinning for a single life. Kakashi and Obito stand there in front of the stone for a long, quiet hour.

It's there that, in front of what will have to serve as Rin's grave (_fallen soldiers end their days in fire_), Obito decides that he's going to change. He can't just rely on Sensei or Kakashi to save the day, or even to take care of themselves. So obviously, he's going to have to pick up the slack.

Two days later, Obito harasses a non-shinobi cousin into telling him how to get a job at the hospital. It's the least he can do.

When the war ends, Kakashi joins ANBU. Obito is torn between disapproval and pride, because while he has no interest in seeing his best friend kill his humanity for the sake of serving the village, he also knows that Kakashi _can_ succeed at it and most likely will. He's done it before from Obito's perspective, and he can do it again. He'll be a captain within a few years if Obito's guess is right, and then he'll be "captain" for real.

By that point, Obito is an adept user of the Shousen jutsu, though he's nowhere near Rin's old standard of _absolute perfection_, but he can at least substitute for the hospital if Kakashi's decided to skip out on his mandatory post-mission checkups. He's hacked off what seems like half of his clan in pursuing medical ninjutsu as opposed to being a straight combat type like Uchiha generally strive to be, but he doesn't care. They can all hang. None of them even know he has the Mangekyou and he's not interested in telling them (_they could guess anyone could guess just count the corpses in his wake_).

Sensei continues doing his thing—dating Kushina, filling out paperwork, working on his seal mastery, interacting with his students (_or just him because Kakashi's never around anymore_), and generally just continuing to be Sensei. If he hadn't known Sensei so well and even seen a shrine at Sensei's house—devoted to his parents, his old friends, and now Rin—he might not have thought anything had changed.

But they're alive a year later and that's enough. They're coping. Now that the war's over, it might even he appropriate to say that they're getting back on their feet.

That's when Fate proves to be a vindictive bastard and slaps them in the face with the Kyuubi.

Obito knows ahead of time that _something_ happens the day Naruto is born. In his world, someone powerful enough to be Madara massacred the Uchiha clan and a decent chunk of Konoha's standing army in a single night before being taken out by the combined efforts of Sensei, Kushina, a pair of daiyoukai, and a triad of foxes. He remembers it clearly because he was part of the initial wave of first-responders—not a part of a team, no, but he was the first one to discover that by some miracle, Itachi and Sasuke had been spared. Rin had been there, doing what she could, but it's hard to heal the dead. Kakashi had been there, too, and ANBU then as well. Obito remembers being the one of the few people to encounter that damned ancestor of his and survive, especially while protecting a genin Iruka from point-blank annihilation. In hindsight, he's amazed they didn't all die.

That is _nothing_ compared to the Kyuubi. The horribly malicious chakra presses down on all of them and if he'd been any younger in his head he would have panicked. The Kyuubi is like nothing they've ever been trained to fight, nothing that any of them _can_ fight. All they can do is die.

Obito's crying as it appears, but not out of fear. He alone of his age group realizes that, in order for the Kyuubi to be free and attacking the village, _Kushina has to be dead_. And that doesn't bode well for Sensei or Naruto either, which scares him so badly he's not sure what to do or who to look at for any kind of direction. No one knows anything.

The adults try to keep anyone under the age of seventeen away from the fight using a barrier seal. Even Kakashi and Gai are kept back, though to be honest he's not sure what they'd be able to do against a bijuu anyway.

Obito taps Kakashi on the shoulder. "Hey, keep my place for me, would you?"

"Obito, what the hell are you—?" Kakashi starts, and then Obito _pulls_ on the fabric of space-time with his Mangekyou Sharingan and disappears in a _pop_ of displaced air. He reappears in the back hills outside of Konoha, trying to find _anyone's _chakra, and is gone in another _pop_ after Sensei.

This time, he reappears on Gamabunta's head, by Sensei's knee.

"Sensei." Obito says, and Sensei blinks stupidly at him for a moment before he has to return his attention to the Kyuubi. "Let me try."

"With what?" Sensei demands.

Obito activates his Mangekyou Sharingan and turns to the Kyuubi. This time, he doesn't _pull_, he _projects_. There's a glint in its eye that tells him another Mangekyou Sharingan user is on the battlefield, controlling it, and all he has to do is displace that chakra with his own for a moment.

The Kyuubi's mind isn't that unlike the Sanbi's. In the end, they're siblings, so all Obito has to do is ask it a question that he doubts has been posed to this Kyuubi before. It might not have worked with the Sanbi, but the Sanbi had Rin's torturous temporary seal to deal with even before Obito had tried to contact it, and Obito hadn't thought to use the Mangekyou then. The Kyuubi is loose and, while he doesn't know the details of Kushina's seal, he can guess that it isn't happy under its "master" either.

"Stalling, Sensei." Obito murmurs, distracted, and asks the Kyuubi to speak to him.

**What do you _want_, Uchiha whelp?**

Oh, _thank the merciful kami_ it still has a mind left to contact.

_Why are you attacking Konoha?_ Obito asks, even as the fox's body grows still and eyes narrow at him. Its eyes are a perfect reflection of his Mangekyou Sharingan, which is highly disturbing considering that they're set in a face that's about a thousand times larger than his, but it's clearly sapient and it's speaking to him, which is better than he'd hoped for. He won't release his control of its body just yet, instead gently urging it to stop its rampaging for as long as it's speaking to him. He doesn't doubt that it could flatten them all with a swing of its tails if he does this wrong.

Behind him, Sensei is somewhere between flabbergasted and wary—whoever did this is still out there, and Obito doubts that this is the first thing the bastard did.

**This wretched little city of disgusting hairless apes? Why would I not, when your blighted ancestor _dragged me here_? **It roars, all nine tails lashing the air hard enough to lay even the great Hashirama trees out flat. **When your tree-hugging founder crammed me into a womb to be tortured for all eternity? _Why should I leave any of you alive?_**

_None of us wanted to do that to you!_ Obito shouts in his head. _Uchiha Madara was cast out for what he did to you and to us. He died! The only way we could stop you at the time was to seal you away—we're not **perfect**, dammit, but I doubt even Hashirama-sama would have sealed you into Mito-sama if he knew what the seal would do to you!_

**SCUM-SUCKING TWO-FACED UCHIHA SPAWN OF A HAIRLESS SEWER RAT! HOW _DARE_ YOU?!**

_I dare because this place—these people—are what **I'm **willing to fight for and protect. All Madara wants to do is kill—HOW CAN YOU LET HIM WIN?!_

Then Sensei places his hand on Obito's back and he's pulled out of his mental war with the Kyuubi to blink his way back to reality. Kushina-sama (_she's alive she's alive she's alive how is she alive_) has the fox in the signature Uzumaki chakra chains at the edge of an old, used-up seal that must have had something to do with how the Kyuubi got loose, Naruto nestled in a basket by her side, and Sensei steps up to them both even as Obito frantically tries to keep the Kyuubi from simply crushing them. Sensei raises his hands. "_Kuchiyose: Shiki Fuujin_!"

The Kyuubi is going to kill them all.

* * *

**_SITUATION CRITICAL!_**

* * *

…_Shinigami are supposed to be bigger, right?_

The creature that appears in the center of the lake is actually rather human. While he's sure the shinigami related to the Shiki Fuujin is supposed to be a gigantic white-haired, horned humanoid figure standing over the summoner and its target, what he sees is a white-haired figure in a white kimono with red borders and a yellow obi. It shakes its head, as though confused by this turn of events, and looks up at the Kyuubi. Then at Sensei and Kushina and Naruto.

Then at him. Time freezes.

_Oh, fuck._

That's not a shinigami. That's a _daiyoukai_. She's older than Sanyu and Amaya, the twins from the Uchiha Massacre in his old timeline, but she's missing the blue moon mark on her forehead and her facial stripes are purple rather than blue or red. She's almost blurred, covered by the shinigami funeral shroud, and even his Sharingan can't see past it. She has the shinigami's legendary knife between her teeth like normal, but even as he watches she pulls it out and places it in the bow of her obi and retrieves a mirror on a necklace. But she has the golden eyes and the pointed ears and, going by the steadily growing pulse of youki coming from her, all of the power.

The next two seconds go by as though in slow motion. With his Mangekyou Sharingan, he can see the instant when she turns to Sensei and Kushina, knife suddenly in her trembling right hand, as the Kyuubi opens its mouth to launch another Bijuudama when none of them have any chance to run. The substitute shinigami slashes down as _something_—and now he's starting to realize the limits of the Sharingan—explodes with white chakra light. He gets the image of the Kyuubi _stretching_ like rubber burned into his mind's eye, along with Sensei and Kushina just _dropping_ and Naruto's high-pitched wail of protest against, well, everything.

The whole world goes black.

* * *

**_...TRY AGAIN?_**


	2. Prologue the Second

He wakes up again, on the same day as the last attempt at living his life again, and is surprised that _somehow_ he's now the kunoichi on Team Minato. At first he's caught up in just freaking out over the differences in the team dynamic, between Rin-chan and Rin-kun, and Kakashi's weirdly not-quite-polite treatment of him, but what throws him off the most is that he has to compensate for every one of his movements in a body that is balanced entirely wrong and that makes him feel like he's been hit with a particularly screwy genjutsu.

It isn't a genjutsu that he can dismiss, if it is one at all, and Obito has _no goddamn idea_ how he survives the mission when he's almost terminally distracted by constantly _freaking the fuck out_. Mostly in his head, granted, but Sensei can probably see it.

He dares Sensei to try and "understand" being turned into a thirteen-year-old girl. Because the second he does, Obito is going to completely flip his shit.

Interestingly, the Iwa-nin are still men (_which means it's just him and Rin that're off, great_), but they also elect to try and grab him instead of Rin. This is the kind of thing that convinces Obito that the shinobi world is absolutely sexist, and that Iwa-nin are complete morons, because Kakashi disembowels Taiseki within fifteen seconds while Rin-kun valiantly struggles to keep Kakkou from stabbing him in the back. For Obito's part—and he hasn't even bothered to learn his name in this new world because he feels like that would be acknowledging that he basically has (_reincarnation-induced?_) gender dysphoria—he catches Kakkou in the face with Kamui and calls it a public service.

As the now-headless corpse hits the ground, Rin catches his (_her?_) arm and says, "Orihime-chan"—_Oh, you're fucking kidding me_, Obito thinks—"that was…when did you activate your Sharingan?" He sounds stunned. Male-Rin is doing an excellent fish impersonation, Obito thinks distantly.

"What _was_ that?" Kakashi demands, and there's an edge in that voice that tells Obito that he's worried. The whole situation feels _wrong_.

"Mangekyou Sharingan." Obito says, numb. He doesn't want to talk about this; he just wants this stupid fucking mission _over with forever_ and he wants to kill Kakkou all over again, despite the fact that it doesn't really make any sense to do so. He needs an outlet for his frustration, though, and they're not going to hit any more point defense forces until the bridge itself. _Argh_.

On one hand, his teammates thankfully don't ask any more questions, apparently chalking the whole thing up to shock or maybe "that time of the month"—which is a thought that makes Obito kick Kakashi in the back of the knee when he realizes it—and the rest of the mission goes okay.

Relatively, anyway. Obito still kills more than twenty enemy ninjas with Kamui intangibility and a pair of kunai, but his teammates are okay and he _almost_ thinks he can deal with this shit by the time Sensei pops up again to check on his minions.

The fact that his Sharingan jumped two levels from where it _ought _to be if he'd legitimately activated it on this mission doesn't seem to bother Sensei much. Guy-Rin and Kakashi seem to have convinced him that the situation was way more dramatic than it actually was, and Kakashi's comment about women being overemotional makes Obito threaten to castrate him with a pair of senbon.

Okay, so making all of his teammates wince at once is kind of neat. He doesn't plan on making a habit of it, even if he's apparently restricted to a female body this time around (_and all of the problems that come with that, oh shit_), but it's still funny.

Puberty sucked the first time through, but being a girl made it suck _more_. Tsunade _did_ come up with a technique that made it possible to essentially put menstruation on hold, which Obito doesn't actually remember probably because of its irrelevance to his old life, but his sanity degrades the more he dwells on the issues of "becoming a woman." He's a graceless and distinctly unfeminine kunoichi with the Mangekyou Sharingan at thirteen and a load of Clan baggage that comes with that. He doesn't _exactly _spit in his parents' faces when they start drawing up marriage plans and not-so-subtly encouraging him to retire early, but he might as well have by Uchiha standards. The situation deteriorates.

Especially after it eventually comes out that Kakashi has a crush on him, a little after Obito turns fourteen. So does Rin-kun, incidentally, but Obito freaks out _slightly _less over that. No matter what, he is _not_ dating his best friend.

Obito finds out about this after the third time he witnesses a pair of older Uchiha bachelors—Yoshi and Matsu, who are equally stupid no matter where or when he sees them—and Kakashi get into an argument over "Orihime-chan." He cracks Yoshi and Matsu's heads together and has Kakashi explain, at length, what the hell is going on. He doesn't like the explanation, though it makes sense in this twisted reality, and decides that Kakashi probably doesn't deserve to get knocked on his ass for trying _not_ to be a chauvinist pig. They drop the idiots off on Fugaku's doorstep and head off to their team meeting as if nothing happened.

Obito still does his best to beat the crap out of Kakashi just on principle when it's their turn to spar. He's going to catch up to or surpass Kakashi sooner or later, kunoichi or not, and the prodigy steps up his game as well. They're leaving Rin in their dust in everything but medical ninjutsu, but Obito has a leg up on that, too.

(_He has officially learned more in a couple of months than he ever did from the Academy about being kunoichi, which scares the hell out of him._)

When he finally does get kicked out of the Uchiha clan, it's only after a particularly bitter argument between him and his parents. His father is every bit as bullheaded as ever, only now it's focused on Obito's kunoichi status and apparent clan responsibility to pop out grandkids with strong Sharingan genes. While the exact content of the argument is different, this is basically a variant on Obito's original reasons not to inform anyone other than his team that he ever activated his Sharingan. While it _is_ possible to come up with, say, a Caged Bird Seal variant for the Sharingan, and Obito _thinks_ that his clan might decide that the only solution is keeping him captive through fuuinjutsu, he doesn't care.

His clan stopped being his family a long time ago.

_"You are a capable kunoichi, Orihime," his father says, which is the closest thing to a compliment Obito has heard from the man in years and it's not even addressed to the right person, "but you need to start thinking of your future."_

_"And what kind of future is that?" Obito shoots back, standing up and looming over the table despite being slighter and less intimidating than he's been in ages. But he has the Sharingan now, even if he's not using it. "I'm going to make jounin and I'm going to protect Konoha if it kills me!"_

_"This clan is your family, Orihime," his mother says. "You have a responsibility to us, too."_

_He wants to laugh. He wants to laugh so badly that he's shaking, backing away from his parents like he's never seen them before in his life. They're not even **his**_, _they're Orihime's, and he's not even sure what his female clone would have done in this situation. He just knows what **he** is going to do, and the rest of the world's going to have to live with it._

_"No." Obito says. "You haven't seen what I can do, what I'm going to be. I can't stop now!"_

_His father is the same in all worlds. He's caught up in the clan and politics and the shame of having a "weakling" for a child, while his mother's been disappointed in his—in Orihime's—failure to show off the Sharingan or master the higher levels of his clan's fire jutsu, and they're both so **blind** that Obito wonders how he could have possibly thought he knew them. Or that he wanted to. Now that she can actually make a difference, they want to forcibly retire…her?_

_Ah, fuck, it's starting to get internalized._

_"I won't be tied down by the clan just when the village needs me the most!"_

_Her father has been dismissive and disapproving for years. Snide comments are his sole method of communication. Her mother just ignores everything._

_It's the first time her father's ever tried to hit her. **Tried**, because Orihime/Obito is very, very good at using her/his Mangekyou Sharingan by now and her/his father's hand simply passes through her/his head._

_Obito, having partially shoved the "Orihime" persona back into a mental box, flees while his parents are still reeling in shock._

Obito moves in with Kushina for a bit. He doesn't know the other kunoichi that well, relative to Sensei or Kakashi or Rin-kun, but it's just a temporary situation until he can get his own apartment set up.

When he finally moves into his apartment, he opens his door the next day and Kakashi is there, holding a potted plant.

"It's a housewarming gift." Kakashi says bluntly, without being asked.

"…Okay?" Obito says, and takes it. Kakashi disappears after, apparently leaving the fate of the plant solely to Obito. He puts it in his new window-box garden since he's probably going to be gone frequently and Konoha weather is generally better for bamboo than the inside of an apartment is. Sensei helps put up security seals, which Obito resolves to learn this time around, and Rin shows up with a bunch of herbal remedies and salves that are probably a lot stronger than the kind Obito can afford on his now-reduced income.

It seems to be going okay, in a kind of numb way, until Kushina decides to confront Obito on "playing with boys' hearts."

Kushina has a record of being the same way, but now that she's officially in a relationship with Minato, she pretty much has the high ground. He wonders briefly if Orihime spent any of her time flirting with her male teammates, then resolves never to think of it again. Apparently, being deliberately obtuse and deaf to his teammate's attempts at earning his approval because of something completely alien to Orihime (_gender dysphoria, again_) but _very_ relevant to Obito…is somehow considered being a tease? It's news to him.

_Ugh_.

The stupid, annoying, and mildly horrifying part is that the "Orihime" part of him actually_ is_ attracted to guys. Specifically, to her teammates, and the boys have noticed the shift in behavior. Most people don't go from "blushing fangirl" to "apparently asexual (due to severe gender issues)" overnight, and sooner or later his team is going to freak out over it. Well, maybe. Rin isn't really given to freaking out as a rule, Kakashi is…Kakashi, and Sensei is pretty good at rolling with the punches. It is kind of important to the dynamics of their team, though.

Obito hates that he's stolen her life, but he hates it more that he's living it.

Nothing happens on the tenth of October that year, oddly enough. Aside from Naruto being born, which means everyone is distracted by the baby and there are a few more intermittent kidnapping and assassination attempts. Obito kills most of the conspirators offhandedly—he's a lot better at Kamui than the other Mangekyou Sharingan techniques and it doesn't kill his eyesight nearly as quickly—and earns a nickname for him/herself: the Phantom Princess.

Obito would have preferred if they left the "princess" part out of it, but nicknames are things other people give you and Phantom Obito technically doesn't exist in this world. Kakashi gets his dad's old moniker, the White Fang of Konoha, mostly due to mistaken identity and the fact that Kakashi still swings his dad's tantou around, and he joins ANBU.

It's like he's magnetically attracted to black ops.

By the time they're seventeen and all jounin, most of the romantic triangle bullshit on Team Minato is officially put on hold. Orihime might like Rin-kun and Kakashi-kun, with emphasis slightly more on the former, and both of them like her back, but Obito _isn't_ Orihime and ignores any and all of his teammates' attempts to get "her" attention.

By the time they're twenty-two, Naruto's running around as the village's eight-year-old golden boy and driving the chuunin completely crazy with his antics. In the intervening years, there have been a few drunken confessions and make-outs and all sorts of shenanigans that make Obito consider finding the inventor of the hangover and killing him, and the whole situation is more muddled than ever. Obito and Rin are both medic-nin (which means that Rin is an actual medic and Obito is a field medic who works in the hospital a lot), which means they see each other mostly during coffee breaks and Kakashi mostly when he comes back from a mission with most of his blood missing, and the atmosphere is thick enough to cut with a kunai. Kakashi finally quits ANBU when Obito convinces him to stop trying to kill himself, which means more alcohol is involved and more awkward things happen.

Then the Uchiha clan is revealed to be plotting a coup. Technically, Obito isn't supposed to know about the mission to cut said conspiracy short and, as a member of said clan by blood if not by anything else, would have been included in the casualty list if Danzou had any say in it. Sensei tries to talk the clan out of it, Root tries to talk the clan into it, and eventually the whole thing explodes into an intra-clan civil war.

Or it would have, if Obito hadn't quietly poisoned Danzou as well as Hotaru, Homura, and every Uchiha clan elder who was on board with launching a coup several weeks before the massacre was due to happen. He pins the whole thing on Orochimaru and possibly Sasori via creative use of the Mangekyou Sharingan, and while everyone else is confused and scared by the implication, Obito merely tries to avoid thinking about it.

At least Itachi doesn't have to do it—he'd overheard that much while using Kamui to get around undetected, and decided that sparing his cousin the guilt was the best he could do.

Obito keeps that secret close to his chest until the day Kakashi enters Team Seven—seriously, he seems destined to get the same kids every time, since Obito had outright refused to be a jounin sensei despite being one of the very rare jounin-ranked kunoichi not named Kurenai—into the Konoha Chuunin Exams. Orochimaru is dangerous, yes, but Obito knows that he can take the man down as long as he can catch him by surprise. Sensei could, too, but…

It's when he's in the middle of coming up with excuses that he decides he can't trust his own judgment anymore. So he goes to the Hokage's office and requests a private meeting.

He doesn't say anything about his old lives, because no one would believe him anyway, but he uses the experience he gained there in order to point Sensei in the right direction. He leaves a deliberate hole in the story as far as the assassinations are concerned, since Shisui doesn't need any more trouble as clan head and Itachi sure as hell doesn't need to know that his once-favorite cousin chose murder as a solution to a problem that _ought_ to have been talked out. Sensei doesn't call him on it, but everyone starts preparing for Orochimaru's invasion anyway. He confesses to pretty much everything else, though, such as the various problems he's been having with his teammates that have devolved into some kind of nameless clusterfuck of a thing, as well as whatever foreknowledge he has about Konoha's enemies is still relevant.

Orochimaru dies at Sensei's hands. Kabuto is taken out by Rin-kun, with points for the assist going to Gai. Kakashi has a list of kills as long as his arm, including the notorious Sound Four, and Obito thinks that he's killed more Oto-nin in twenty-four hours than he's killed Iwa-nin in his entire lifetime. They're basically cannon fodder despite their loyalty to Orochimaru, and only Kimimaro actually gave him any trouble.

Kamui is remarkably difficult to get around, even with such a powerful kekkei genkai.

Obito isn't actually _sure _if he dies, the day after the Exams, but he sure isn't Uchiha Orihime anymore. Obito kind of hopes that the Phantom Princess manages to figure out what the fuck to do with the rest of Team Minato, and that she isn't too confused when she wakes up. Maybe the memories will carry over and spare her some of the drama Obito started.

_Good luck, kid_.

* * *

He wakes up on the day of the Kannabi Bridge mission again.

At the first sign of Iwa-nin, he immediately kills both of them with Katon: Karyuu Endan despite the risks. Rin isn't kidnapped, which is a relief in a distant sort of way that tells Obito that he's actually going insane by inches. The next day, they manage to destroy the bridge despite the fact that the site is crawling with Iwa-nin, but both of his teammates spend the mission not-so-subtly trying to figure out what the hell changed between Point A and Point B, and Sensei isn't remotely happy with the sudden change in his formerly goofy student. It's not actually _impossible_ that Obito has been replaced by a spy, from Sensei's perspective, but in fact he's just so _tired_ of this bullshit that he'd rather slaughter more than three dozen Iwa-nin than deal with them normally ever again.

Obito spends the rest of the war as a part of an ANBU infiltration team, despite never actually joining and possibly over Sensei's objections, but when he faces Shimura Danzou and forcible recruitment by Root after a successful mission, he isn't able to keep it together anymore.

He thinks that dying in the black blaze of Amaterasu flames ought to at least make it _stick_.

* * *

The bridge, again.

This time Kakashi dies trying to save him from something he would have seen coming, if he'd been able to _think_ past the shroud of _why does this keep happening to me_.

(_no no no **NO**_)

Obito massacres the reinforcing Iwa-nin until can't anymore because he's finally run out of targets, after rescuing Rin on his own and tearing Kakkou and Taiseki limb from limb. At thirteen, he doesn't have the chakra reserves to survive spamming Kamui for more than a few minutes, but he _makes them pay_.

He dies later, while Sensei's demanding that he _stay awake_ and he realizes that he can't follow that order.

* * *

He remembers dying. It happened (_again_), it's over (_oh nothing so easy_), and he can move on (_if wishes were horses_).

So when he blinks up at the sky (_again and again on and on forever_) and sees those same stars in a silver steam above his head, he comes to the conclusion that he's in hell. He doesn't want to see this again—he doesn't want anything to do with this doomed world—and is about to turn his eyes from it and just _shatter_. He's had enough, he's sorry, he just wants to go _home_—

And he can't.

Can't turn his head. Can't flex his fingers. Can't move a muscle. He can't even breathe on his own, only feel his lungs expand and contract entirely separate from anything like his control.

Chill seeps into the back of his mind.

He hears his own voice saying quietly, timidly, "_I know teamwork is an important thing, but Kakashi's always calling me a lazy idiot. Even though people think I'm some kind of elite shinobi because I'm an Uchiha, it's not the same to him. I know Kakashi's an amazing person, but…he's kind of an uptight asshole."_

_No_.

Sensei's voice says, "_Kakashi is the son of the genius shinobi Hatake Sakumo, who was feared as Konoha's White Fang. Compared to that name, even the Sannin aren't half as feared or honored. That's public knowledge, right?_"

_No!_

_This can't be happening!_

But it is. He's back, again, and this time it's obvious that he's not the one in control. He's not sure how this will go, but he already has an inkling of the way this is going to go (_I'll be your good eye_) and wishes he could get enough air to scream.

Thirteen-year-old Obito is not an especially competent shinobi, even by the admittedly low standards set by now-thirty-year-old-and-ethereal Obito sixteen years ago. No Sharingan, no genius-level intellect, and an admittedly shallow pool of available techniques mean that he's the weakest link in the chain in his role. Rin is an excellent medic. Kakashi is a pretty good leader and a talented jounin, if young enough that experience was a problem. Obito's dead weight.

Obito remembers being a ninjutsu specialist. Probably half of his entire repertoire was blatantly stolen from somewhere else, and he isn't ashamed of that. He was good at what he did and made sure to spread the secrets of his enemy's jutsu as much among Konoha's elite as possible, in order to keep people alive. But he also knows that it took _time_ to amass that many techniques and that the miniature copy of him leading the way is not going to have that long.

Rin gets kidnapped (_again_).

Kakashi loses an eye (_which is new but unsurprising_).

Obito gets crushed by a rock (_which explains the phantom pain from failed attempts_).

He expects it to end there, with his half-flattened corpse being an object of interest for rats or perhaps particularly stubborn Iwa-nin. Maybe the Sharingan—well, the other one, anyway—will end up being dissected and reassessed and maybe the war will drag on for years with even more ridiculous losses. Maybe Rin won't die this time around. Maybe Kakashi will end up becoming famous as a non-Uchiha user of the Sharingan. Maybe they'll get over his loss and get married or something. He just doesn't know, and it's not like he's really going to live to see it.

He's therefore extremely surprised to find that his mini-self actually makes it.

He's even more surprised to find out that his miniature clone has successfully attracted the attention of one Uchiha Madara, _who is supposed to be dead_.

Obito-the-Elder is simultaneously trying to and trying not to listen to him. He feels like he needs to know the details, of this Moon's Eye plan and the way the elder Uchiha had reverse-engineered the Rinnegan (_and wasn't that just a wonderful kick in the teeth_) out of his Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan and a smattering of Senju DNA. He needs to know how the _fuck_ Madara plans on reviving the Juubi, Gedou Mazou or not—because, frankly, the only reason for it to exist is either as a toy for a Rinnegan-user or a container for the bijuu. He doubts Madara, who is probably more than ninety years old and hardly less canny than he's ever been, is modest or sane enough to know that the Juubi is not to be toyed with.

Obito remembers the Naka Shrine. He can't show anyone its contents except in the case of Sharingan-users, but as the head of the Uchiha clan (_how is it a clan if there are only three members left_), he'd figured enough out from its tablet and the testimonies of the youkai who'd _been there_ when the Juubi had met its end. The statue has "bad news" written all over it, down to the weird chakra-thrumming cords attached to Madara's back, and he can't figure out how to tell Obito-the-Younger a goddamn thing.

_That thing is supposed to still be on the **moon**._

What worries him is that the other version of him seems to be _listening._

Obito-the-Elder is old enough to know that the shinobi world is fundamentally broken. It's been broken since long before even Madara was born; back through the bad old days of clan wars and even to the time of the Rikudou Sennin, when the Juubi roamed free and the best anyone could say about the era was what they _didn't_ say. Even the ninja villages are just ways for humans to impose a veneer of civilization over a world that's only known what peace is for maybe sixteen years at a time and, if Kagome's stories about _her_ childhood are true (_that miko is a living fossil_), they've missed the goddamn mark a hundred times over.

Obito-the-Younger doesn't know any of that. Even if history _had _been his best subject at the Academy, shinobi history was full of holes where classified or just unpopular history had been discreetly removed. It was hard to notice unless a student went by dates, and even those were sometimes misleading. Basically, propaganda is the name of the game and only those old or intelligent enough to notice tended to even spot the threads.

So, when Madara says he wishes for a peaceful word, Obito-the-Younger agrees.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, Obito-the-Younger has some trouble getting around at first. With two limbs replaced by strange grayish substitutes that bleed orange sap instead of blood, rehab is slow going. He's helped along by a pair of creatures that make Obito-the Elder wish he could narrow his eyes (_but they're not his anymore so he can't_), who look like prototypes of a strange shinobi he's seen before.

_Zetsu, right? He was a Kusa-nin at some point? It's starting to seem less and less likely._

Still, Obito-the-Younger seems to get along with them. Madara is dying of old age anyway, so it's unlikely he'll be under the older Uchiha's thumb for too much longer.

Eventually, Obito-the-Younger leaves. He's accompanied on this maiden voyage (_back to Konoha as a plant person_) by the two proto-Zetsu things, and it takes Obito-the-Elder a while to figure out what path they're using. It takes him longer to guess how many days (_weeks/months_) he's been trapped in this hidey-hole, speaking to one other person and two not-quite-people and living in a virtual echo chamber because everyone has the same goddamn opinions.

He realizes the _when_ and _where_ when he hears the sound of the Chidori screaming through the air, of Kiri-nin and Rin's shout of desperation, as glimpses of shadowed masks flicker in the gap where his other eye's vision ought to have been. It chills him to the bone.

Obito-the-Younger rushes out of the forest at the exact moment when Kakashi's Chidori puts a hole through Rin's chest.

Obito-the-Younger _snaps_. He shrieks in rage, and Mokuton from that transplanted arm means that the enemy shinobi—Kiri ANBU—are thoroughly ground into pulp by the time Rin's lifeless body is cradled in his mismatched arms. His vision, already twisted through the Sharingan, does a second turn and then he knows that the Mangekyou has taken form. Kakashi is slumped over on the ground, out cold, but Obito-the-Elder nonetheless is sure that the Mangekyou in that eye is active as well.

Obito-the-Elder doesn't feel his younger self's anguish, but his is more than enough even though it's dulled by repetition. Rin's dead _again_, for the same reason as before and by the same hand. If he didn't know that Rin survived once—that he'd _married her_ in the life he remembers and wishes he was still living—he thinks he'd have gone insane. Last time, he came very close, but he hung onto his humanity by his goddamn fingernails and he did his best to fulfill her wish. He died then, to protect Sensei and Kakashi and the entire village, and even if he'd been afraid that didn't mean he regretted it.

Obito-the-Younger doesn't. He doesn't acknowledge anything but the corpse in his arms, ignoring his unconscious ex-teammate and the bodies of the enemy ninja. Obito-the-Younger's world was very fragile. Now it's broken.

When Obito-the-Younger returns to Madara's hideaway, his older self is not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. He tries not to be surprised anymore. But it seems that his younger copy has one last surprise in store for him.

Obito-the-Younger masters his remaining half of Kamui. He takes Madara's techniques and knowledge for his own. When the older shinobi dies, there are no tears, and Obito-the-Elder waits in the corner of their shared consciousness and tries and fails to get through to his younger self. It's like they're different people now.

Obito-the-Younger becomes a monster.

He's Tobi now.

Tobi haunts Konoha. He hovers around the memorial stone, perhaps because Kakashi appears here so very often, thinking that both of his teammates are dead, when in reality one of them has turned into a homicidal maniac.

"_Kushina-sama is going to have a baby. Oh, Rin, I knew you wanted to be here for it…_"

Obito doesn't know what to think of it all until Tobi walks right through a barrier seal (_oh mother **fuck** I did the same thing last time_) and uses Kamui to wipe out two entire squads of ANBU. Then he moves in on the safehouse in the hills, and Obito suddenly knows _exactly_ what Tobi is planning. He wants to scream, but there's no one who can hear him, and he can't even look away when Tobi snatches the infant Naruto out of the cradle and immediately threatens to _kill him._

He would have succeeded, too, if Sensei hadn't figured out there were exploding tags on Naruto's blanket. Sensei disappears, and Tobi grabs Kushina while he's gone.

He takes Kushina to a sealing array (_FUCK NO GET AWAY FROM HER_). The Kyuubi is extracted. And just like that, Tobi turns the goddamn thing on Kushina. Sensei saves her, _thank the merciful kami_, but Tobi just points it at Konoha instead.

Obito has never wanted to kill someone this badly in his entire life, Pain included.

A lot of things happen in quick succession. As the Kyuubi approaches Konoha, Tobi and Sensei fight. Tobi's control is broken, and he leaves, but Obito knows how the story goes next.

_Sensei uses Shiki Fuujin and seals the Kyuubi into Naruto. Kushina can't survive after the Kyuubi's removal, and she dies too. Naruto grows up alone, unless Kakashi steps in, but he's so shit at interpersonal responsibility I bet the answer's still going to be no._

Tobi departs. He heads instead to Ame, where he _creates_ Pain from the wreck of Akatsuki and Hanzou and Root-raised ANBU and Amegakure. Somehow, Obito has stopped being surprised—it almost makes sense that Tobi would be this vicious, this ambitious. He's looking at all of his own personality traits turned inside-out, after all. Or maybe just turned to evil.

He turns Kiri on itself, hitting the Yondaime Mizukage with the Mangekyou and letting the village turn itself into the Bloody Mist. In doing so, he picks up Hoshigaki Kisame—apparently, he's been a disappointed idealist all this time, and eventually becomes Tobi's only confidante other than Obito, who would really prefer to be his murderer instead. When the Kaguya clan attempts to assassinate the Mizukage, Yagura, it gets itself slaughtered down to a single surviving child in retaliation. When Momochi Zabuza tries a coup, he's chased out as a missing-nin and traitor. Obito wonders if Tobi is doing it to avenge Rin, but he can't exactly ask.

Obito grows quiet as the years pass.

When the Uchiha clan back in Konoha begins to bristle at being treated less than fairly, as much because of Councilman Shimura Danzou as their own arrogance, Tobi needles them onward. When it almost looks like the clan elders have succeeded in pushing them into it, Shimura Danzou convenes with Utatane Hotaru and Mitokado Homura and they order the Uchiha Massacre. Itachi carries out the hit on his immediate family, but Tobi is there every step of the way to reduce the rest to corpses.

Obito doesn't think Tobi notices the way Itachi is crying toward the end. He hopes he never does.

Tobi collects what seems like dozens of Sharingan eyes. He shares some with Danzou, and the man places them in a grayish limb that resembles Tobi's so much that Obito knows they got the idea from the same source: Madara.

Obito wonders, briefly, what Kagami would have thought if he saw his old teammate steal his son's eye, and decides not to think on it. Shisui's Mangekyou is hideously dangerous in the wrong hands, being oriented toward genjutsu in general and undetectable mind-control in particular—thank the merciful kami that Itachi has the other one.

Tobi doesn't know that last part—Obito just knows Itachi (_mostly_) and Shisui (_less so but he used to call Kagami ojisan and mean it_) a little too well, and Danzou just enough.

Time moves onward. Tobi reinvents Akatsuki from the ground up, turning it into the refuge for S-class missing-nin that it was once upon a time. Pain and Konan are there, more as relics of a bygone age than anything, while Kisame joins because he follows Tobi and Itachi follows because he has no choice. Orochimaru comes and goes, eventually chased off by Itachi and meaning that Sasori (_Kakashi's dad killed his parents_) needs a new partner. Itachi forces Deidara into the role, student of the Sandaime Tsuchikage or not. Kakuzu is already there, sort of like an old vase in a house that has a million of them already and no one really knows where any of them came from, and keeps killing his partners until Hidan shows up. Zetsu comes along more because he likes Tobi than anything, and with Madara's will carrying on as the new Black Zetsu while White Zetsu remains the same idiot as before, they're only there to help him succeed.

Their new mission is to capture the Bijuu. Each two-man pair is assigned two bijuu, though Konan is exempt for a reason no one knows. Tobi doesn't care, relaying his orders through Pain, who seems to think that creating a super-weapon through Tobi's plan will end all war. He doesn't understand a thing. For a child of a warzones, he's naïve.

Of them, only Kisame and Zetsu are loyal. The rest of them are distracted (_Kakuzu, Deidara, Sasori, Hidan_), or depressed (_Itachi, Konan, Pain_), or actively plotting to steal power for themselves (_Orochimaru_). Obito hates every last one of them, and he's pretty sure Tobi does, too.

Sometimes he wonders if Tobi even thinks before running off to cause more pain. Not often, though—nearly thirteen years in this hell has convinced him that his opinions don't matter and that there are no options left.

Obito wishes he could close his eyes to the world and run away, but Tobi won't let him.

Sasori dies. Deidara is in need of a replacement teammate, so Tobi joins his own goddamn organization and pretends that there's anything like a soul left inside his body.

_I'm here, I guess. Wonder what that makes him_.

Then another problem comes to his attention: Itachi's dying.

It's not obvious, given the younger Uchiha's downright ridiculous skill and power (_even if he's still afraid of "Madara"_), but Obito didn't train to be a medic-nin for nothing the last time around. Obito doesn't want to see him die—he's the only sane relative left, it seems—but when Itachi feels death's presence creeping around, he speeds up his plans. And Obito knows that Itachi _always_ has a plan, especially for the kid brother he left behind in Konoha.

Even if Sasuke's a missing-nin too.

In the meantime, Tobi takes on the Sanbi. Obito wonders if he bears any kind of grudge against it, but Tobi lets Deidara take it down and doesn't seem to mind, just babbling away like usual and making "Deidara-senpai" attempt murder on a daily basis out of sheer annoyance.

Sasuke kills Deidara. Or at least Deidara kills himself and fails to take Sasuke with him. Given how twisted the youngest Uchiha has become over the years, Obito's not sure it's really a victory.

Tobi appears in front of Naruto's team, seemingly to taunt them, and makes a mockery of their attacks. None of them have the slightest clue how to deal with him and Obito wants to reach out with _his_ Sharingan and trap Tobi in one side or the other. Then rip him in half. Tobi _orphaned _Naruto, not to mention causing more trouble in one lifetime than Madara's managed even in his extended one. _He has no right to get in their way!_

He distracts Team 8 and Team Yamato long enough for Sasuke to confront Itachi. Itachi dies.

Tobi turns Sasuke into a monster, too. It only takes him a few dozen sentences.

And at the same time, Pain finally _moves_. Jiraiya's dead, and Konoha is flattened by the Six Paths of Pain. Tobi doesn't care all that much, so Obito never sees the full list of the dead, but he can damn well guess. The village is still a bloody crater, and the Fourth Shinobi War is right around the corner.

(He's surprised when Konan says that Naruto got Nagato to turn back to his oldest philosophy and revive the dead, but it's the only good news he's had in ages and he clings to it.)

Obito wishes he could retroactively kill Tobi. That he'd really died in that rock-fall so many years ago. Or that he'd never been caught by the rocks at all. He's not sure.

Sasuke formally joins Akatsuki and goes after Killer Bee. His new goal in life is to burn Konoha to the ground (_missed your chance you brat_), killing everyone more thoroughly than Pain had, and to do that he seems to think that he needs Tobi's assistance. Even when he fails to capture the Hachibi, the attempt pisses off the Raikage badly enough to pursue a vendetta that carries over to the Five Kage Summit.

Danzou is there instead of Tsunade. Obito worries, briefly, and mourns.

Tobi confronts Danzou's bodyguards and kills them both, though Torune manages to stick those hellish kikai into his artificial limbs and start disintegrating them, which leaves Tobi sidelined when Sasuke confronts Danzou.

Sure, he tries going through the other four Kage first and gets his ass thoroughly kicked, but Killer Bee's survival throws the Raikage off and Zetsu distracts everyone else.

It's the first time Obito gets a clear look at Danzou's…_Sharingarm_. Fuck if he knows what to think after actually _seeing it_ other than that it shouldn't exist. He's not prepared for the Izanagi—the ability to turn reality into genjutsu and genjutsu into reality, at the cost of an implanted Sharingan per usage. Somehow, this seems to translate as "I do not need to dodge" in Danzou's head, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that Sasuke is perfectly willing to simply _keep killing him_ until Izanagi runs out permanently. All the seal work or moral quandaries in the world won't stop Sasuke either—he stabs right through the Uzumaki girl on his team, simply to wound Danzou after the Izanagi has run out and even despite the thick black seal paralyzing his body.

Obito wonders where the fuck his formerly-adorable little cousin got all of these dick moves from, aside from Orochimaru.

_I hate this world so, so much._

Danzou, in his last few moments, rips the Sharingan-laden arm off in order to keep it from consuming him. He also destroys a Mangekyou Sharingan—Shisui's, Obito realizes numbly—and neatly deprives Tobi of a very powerful asset.

After that, it's a question of who can fuck up the world first.

Kabuto pops up, for some reason—Obito resents him with the dull, persistent hate of someone who's officially run out of any more room for things to waste active anger on—and through a general haze of despair he realizes that Tobi and Kabuto have mutually incompatible goals. Tobi wants a new world order, determined by him, and Kabuto just wants to use the rest of the planet as his personal playground like Orochimaru used to (_when did he even die anyway_). Still, Tobi sends Kabuto to figure out where Naruto and Killer Bee got off to when he wasn't paying attention and possibly capture them, but Kabuto comes back with Yamato and Anko and Obito wants to kill him all over again.

Anko is drained of all her chakra, and the Curse Seal she carries is used to obtain Orochimaru's chakra. Yamato is hooked up to some sort of cloning device (_why is the other me such a piece of shit_) in order to…basically mass-produce Zetsus. He doesn't understand _why_ until he sees Kabuto use Edo Tensei with the Zetsus as sacrifices.

When Kabuto uses Edo Tensei to bring Madara back to life—at the peak of his power, in fact, and with the Rinnegan fully formed in both eyes—Obito can only think that Tobi is going to blow a fuse.

He doesn't, but Tobi and Madara get along even less than Kabuto and Tobi did before.

So, there's an army of (_famous_) undead shinobi, versus the combined forces of the Five Elemental Nations. The Edo Tensei constructs range in power from Haku and Zabuza (_Naruto remembered him as a friend_) to the fucking _Sandaime Raikage_. Merciful kami, Obito wishes Tobi was still vulnerable to heart attacks and other spontaneous hiccups of critical internal organs, but being half-Zetsu himself had neatly sidestepped that issue. This entire situation is _so fucked up_ and he wants it all to _end._

It does. Eventually.

Kakashi has the Mangekyou and Kamui, though he's not as adept at using it as Tobi is. They fight, flipping back and forth between the hollow world and the real one in order to keep fighting _each other_ instead of leaving Tobi vulnerable to Kyuubi-synchronized Naruto. Tobi thinks he can take Kakashi, and might even be right.

The Juubi's massive body sprouts additional bodies—clones—to deal with the oncoming threat of the New Sannin—Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura—and snaps like some mad dog. Its seven-tomoe Rinnegan glows gray-purple against the night sky.

Obito doesn't know what Tobi is thinking, but his reactions slow, and Kakashi eventually punches a thoroughly lethal hole in his torso. He warps out of the hollow world, choking on his own blood, and _screams_ as Madara overwrites the White Zetsu half of Tobi's body. It's a horrible sound, audible across half the battlefield, and Obito knows exactly what Madara's going to do even if Tobi can't think about it, or anything at all.

* * *

**_Found you._**

* * *

Then the Juubi, formerly so focused on crushing the Shinobi Alliance, _whirls _around to face him. The place where its Rinnegan eye should be, seven tomoe spinning, has been replaced by a massive golden eye with a pupil like a single slash of a knife. It lunges, ignoring commands and requests and even the attempt at intangibility, and bites Tobi in half with its misshapen flower-pod of a head.

Obito has never wanted to thank a bijuu before, but he does it anyway.

* * *

**_I reject your reality and substitute my own._**

* * *

_Uchiha-san. _

_Uchiha-san._

_Obito?_

* * *

**_TIME_**

**_TO WAKE_**

**_UP_**


	3. Getting Back On His Feet

Obito opens his eyes (_his eyes his his __**his**_) and feels like he wants to cry. He has absolutely no idea where he is, but the monster that is _Tobi_ isn't controlling his body anymore, and that's enough. That will _always_ be enough, because he finds it hard to believe that there's something worse than that hell—he's almost certain that not even Tsukuyomi could be horrifying to the same degree.

(_he killed Sensei and Kushina and Itachi and all of his aunts and uncles and cousins and and __**and**__—_)

He's _almost_ certain he can't turn out like Tobi. For one thing, he's pretty sure he's not that young (_or is it old?_) anymore, judging by the length and shape of his arms and hands, and the faint calluses and scars dotting them.

It's raining. The world outside this place (_cave_) is a dull and dreary gray, and he can see that the ground just _stops_ a few feet from his shelter. There may be a bit of a climb involved, once he thinks he can get his feet back under him without wanting to collapse from fatigue. He rolls onto his side, exhausted.

He's wearing pants, a coat with a sleeve that's been torn off, leg bindings that for some reason wrap _around_ his sandals, and a pair of gloves (_wait whoa fuck wasn't Tobi wearing this?_). There's a kunai holster attached to his broad belt, which had been digging into his side, and he's pretty sure his shuriken pouch is empty. At least showing up wearing Tobi's clothes doesn't mean he has the same hair—he's had a ponytail since he was fifteen and is kinda nostalgic about having it back—and this body seems to be _his_. He's not cold, exactly, aside from where his bare arm is resting against damp rock, but he can't sleep despite how tired he is.

_Where the hell am I?_

"Obito-san?" He blinks at the voice and turns his head to see who it is. He's heard that voice somewhere, though not recently and not when he's out of chakra and feeling like someone dropped one of Pain's summoned animals on his head.

Obito decides he's officially cracked in the head when he realizes that, despite the fact that he's four feet from a daiyoukai, he's really seen too much shit recently to care. He gives her a baleful glare. "Go 'way."

"Obito-san!" she says, sharply, and after a moment she hauls him upright by his bare arm. He glares again, Sharingan activating automatically despite the drain on his feeble chakra levels, and _remembers_. Sometimes he really, really hates the Sharingan, but this time he's pretty sure he's using it right, because it's like a light goes on in his head and he realizes that _this is a daiyoukai _and that none of the other worlds (_dreams/visions_) had normal youkai at all. He's not sure if this is a net good or a net bad thing, but at this point anything that _doesn't _have to do with Tobi is enough in his book.

"Shirayuki?" Obito asks, blinking, and his Sharingan fades as soon as he decides that he doesn't have enough energy to maintain it. "Shirayuki-san. From…Byakko, right? You were there, when the Kyuubi…" _When the Kyuubi attacked and I couldn't stop it._

Shirayuki, who has never been particularly expressive the few times he's met her before, presses her lips together into a thin, bitter line. He realizes belatedly that she's completely soaked by rain (_is that chakra in the water?_) and sits up so she can squeeze into the cave next to him. She's wearing some kind of robe thing, which looks both like and unlike kimono, without the obi or the distinctive tube shape. It's pale and dotted with what looks like watery blood.

"Do you know where we are?" Shirayuki asks, voice low.

"…No. Haven't a clue." Obito admits. It's weird how he never even thought to _check_. God, he's so tired.

"Stay awake." Shirayuki insists, gold eyes flashing. "If we're caught this close to Otogakure, I can't guarantee that I can keep you from being killed if Orochimaru shows up."

"What's going to go wrong if I do?" Obito asks, since it's not as though he hasn't done it a bunch of times already.

She says nothing for a moment, folding her arms. Then, "This is your last chance to come home."

His mouth is suddenly dry and he's wide awake, shocked, "I—I can still go back? But I died!"

(_Rin Kakashi Sensei Kushina Naruto Sasuke Itachi Iruka_)

"And that's supposed to stop you _now_?" Shirayuki explains patiently, as he struggles to maintain an upright seating position. She makes no move to help him up. "The only reason we're having this conversation is because, unlike everyone who just died or just had their soul extracted, _your _soul's reaction to an unpleasant tugging sensation was to access a forbidden dimension-jumping technique and stick to the first compatible body it found in the multiverse. Repeatedly."

"My soul…" Obito swallows hard, connecting the dots, "got _lost_. Really lost. Wow. I don't even know how to _take_ that." Pause. "But everyone else—my family—they're okay?" They have to be—he's not sure he could take learning that even with him undergoing this apparently unique hell of an experience, everything was still broken and empty back where he _ought _to have been. _Please let them be okay_!

Shirayuki says, "Yes." It's blunt and to the point, but it's the best news he's heard in what seems like decades. "But my brothers and I have been trying to find _you_ and any one of millions of alternate universe counterparts ever since."

"So my soul's been jumping universes for _no goddamn reason_? When I ended up in the…no, it wasn't really _my_ past, was it? But I lived that day again, and again, and the details kept changing!" _I made it once and tried to change the future I saw and failed, and then the whole thing with being a kunoichi, and the other time I—Tobi—should have just stayed dead like I was supposed to…_ "Wait. That means Shizune—!"

"At least a dozen people were subject to the Human Path's technique, including you," Shirayuki says quietly. "We managed to retrieve everyone else within two hours."

"Except me." Obito says. It makes too much sense, in a horrible kind of way. "That's why I keep reliving this—you haven't figured out how to pull me back yet. Or if you _do_, things keep turning to shit whenever you try."

Shirayuki nods, solemn.

"And I guess the reason things keep changing is because you keep trying. Or because I have the worst sense of direction in the universe." Obito continues, and is met with another nod. "So, what went wrong this time? Obviously something did, or else I'd be back in my body and driving everyone up the wall like…like I'm supposed to." It still hurts to think about it—about how much he's _wasted_, in effort and emotion and everything else. "Shirayuki-san?"

"The…'win condition' of this scenario is different from the rest." Shirayuki says slowly, red-lined eyes narrowing. "Human souls are judged and sent to the afterlife by a being called Koenma—he's the King of Reikai—and the shinigami works for him. Since your soul and your original body aren't connected, you're dead and fall under his domain." She glances out of the shallow cave, as though expecting some kind of attack or at least a warning sign, and continues, "Because he knows you aren't actually supposed to be dead, he gave you a challenge in order to restore you to life. The problems are that I've only been able to locate your soul recently and that the challenge is supposed to be a kind of test of character if they were allowed to have a dozen conditions. I know what they are, but the subject of the challenge doesn't get any warning before being dropped into it."

"And mine's gonna be something completely ridiculous, isn't it? I've already wasted like five tries, even if I'm not really sure how I was supposed to win that last round." _Nothing can fix Tobi._ He frowns. "What's my escape clause?"

Shirayuki gives him the kind of look that has "I have bad news and worse news" written all over it. "In order to escape this recursion of time, you must survive long enough to make the Daidarabotchi—the Juubi, the Giant—impossible to revive." Something in her expression twists. Maybe it's pity.

For a moment, Obito can't think of anything to say. Then a thought comes to mind, unbidden, and a rusty laugh escapes him even if he'd like to cry instead. _Dammit, dammit, dammit_. "…I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that if you'd managed to tell me earlier, it'd have been something a little less impossible."

Shirayuki nods.

"Well. Uh. This has been enlightening in _all_ the wrong ways." Obito says after another pregnant pause. "You're going to help me out with this, right?"

Shirayuki says, "That's the whole reason I'm here. You can probably tell me a bit about what happened in some of the previous timelines, in order to find out what worked and what did not. You know more about the situation than I do."

"Yeah, I can!" Obito says, with a sort of manic cheer that brings Shirayuki up short. "Tomorrow."

"But—"

That's all Obito hears before his chakra levels finally drop below the minimum threshold for conscious thought, and he passes out.

**_TRY AGAIN?_**

* * *

**_BEGIN!_**

Obito wakes up again on a futon, which is something of an improvement over "trapped inside one's own body" or "a cave." The room he's in seems to be a hotel, given the lack of photos, posters, potted plants, or porn he's come to expect from most of the residences he's ever visited (_or maybe that's just because he used to be Kakashi's roommate once upon a time_). Sunlight streams in through the window, though going by the angle of the sun and the color of the sky it's probably mid-afternoon. There's a futon folded next to his, with breakfast—dinner—on a tea tray on the floor next to him. Next to it, a stack of what seem to be clothes—yes, totaling up to one pair dark blue pants, boxers, a new roll of bandages, a new shinobi-grade mesh shirt and padded jacket—has also been folded up and placed within easy reach.

Which is nice, considering that he _still_ feels like someone's tried to beat him to death with a rhinoceros. Probably Pain, the bastard. Getting up and walking around (_and probably getting into a fight_) are a bit beyond him right now.

He's eating his way through miso soup, pickled daikon, rice, and at least half a pot of tea when the door slides open. He doesn't even have to look up to know that Shirayuki's back, because it's pretty hard to mistake a daiyoukai for anything else. Very few people are complete chakra voids.

She sets a glass of water and a pair of pills—likely painkillers or soldier pills—on the tray. Then she sits down on the folded futon and waits for him to finish. She's dressed in less formal clothes now—she actually kind of looks like a kunoichi, with dark green pants under a white-and-paler-green slit-dress thing, as well as a mesh shirt and forearm guards. No hitai-ate, but since she's not and is never going to be an actual shinobi, Obito thinks he can let that one pass.

He avoids voicing any comments that come to mind about striped mint toothpaste, though. Green is _not_ her color.

"So," Obito says after a while, because this is getting kind of creepy, "when is this, anyway?"

"Thirteen years after the Kyuubi attack, more or less." At Obito's questioning glance, she adds, "I took a look at Konoha, and there were four heads on the monument despite the Sandaime being Hokage. Also, I've seen enough to know that the Hokage Monument is only covered in graffiti the day before Naruto graduates the Academy."

_Naruto was the only one who ever wanted to draw a moustache on his dad's face_, Obito thinks, and sighs. He'd hoped that being here would have somehow thrown off Tobi's version of history, but apparently not. And at some point he needs to ask Shirayuki how many timelines she'd visited while trying to find him. "So why am I _here_ when it's pretty obvious Tobi's still _out there_? You know. In general."

Obito knows pretty much down to the square meter where the alternate universe clone of him is, at any given moment, but he finds that he doesn't care. Tobi'd spent a _long_ time waiting for the Rinnegan to develop fully, whether in Nagato's eye socket or in a glorified fish tank in a lab somewhere. He wants to see Tobi _burn_, and he pushes those thoughts away before his Sharingan spontaneously activates just out of hatred. He can't kill the bastard yet—he's kind of bedridden, and anyway he's not capable of the Izanagi as he is now (_or maybe ever_), lacking Senju DNA and all.

This whole situation pisses him off when it isn't trying to snap his mind like a toothpick.

Shirayuki says after a while, "Using the Juubi to kill you…worked. For about half of the problem."

Oh. Well. He's not sure how to feel about that, really, but at least that's one mystery solved. He'd known the Juubi wasn't supposed to have a giant cat-eye. Now he at least knew why it _had_. And killing Tobi is always going to be a plus in his book.

"How so?" Obito asks, putting his chopsticks back on the tray. He glances at the pills, briefly, before taking them and the water and downing both in a few short swallows. Since there's no rush of chakra, he has to assume they're painkillers. Given that Shirayuki isn't a kunoichi, she probably can't get her hands on food or soldier pills anyway. Even if they weren't expensive, they're too dangerous for civilians.

Shirayuki says evenly, "All of the challenges require you to live. But the last one had a specific caveat—history needed to be changed. So I took care of it when you were unable to."

"I'd love to know how I was supposed to be changing things when I didn't even have control over my own _body_." Obito says bitterly. It doesn't suit him, but neither did thirteen years in what amounted to being buried alive under a timeclone's psychoses.

"Koenma does not like to deal with my family, and sometimes it shows," Shirayuki says mildly, as though they're discussing the weather and not the fact that his soul is displaced from what ought to be his reality, and managing not to answer his question at the same time, "but he doesn't like the idea of taking a soul before its time, either. Hence, allowing a partial victory."

"I'm gonna take a not-so-wild guess and say that bargaining with the King of Hell for my soul isn't exactly a walk in the park." Obito says, wishing, not for the first time, that he could find Fate and stab it in the metaphysical face.

"It could be worse. If his father was still in charge, we'd have to kill him." Shirayuki replies. "As it is, the partial success was enough to give you a body." She lifts one of his hands, and the nasty impalement scar he earned when he was twenty-eight is gone. "And you're exactly as old as Tobi is at this point in the timeline. I don't like to think of what would happen if Koenma took all of the years you spent in other lives and stacked them."

"Good thing he's not the boss of us, then." Obito scratches the side of his jaw and says slowly, thinking aloud, "So, twelve years and maybe a few months after the Kyuubi. Nearly fourteen since Tobi got flattened back in Kusa. That gives us about three or so more years to play with until Tobi revives the Juubi and kinda sets the world on fire in a giant cosmic temper tantrum."

Something flashes across her face.

"So, the deal this time is to stop the Juubi." Obito continues, glancing at her for confirmation. She nods. He adds, "And try not to die in the process. Doesn't sound _too_ impossible. There's gotta be a catch, though."

"…We can't kill Tobi."

Obito puts his fist through the floor.

They manage to get the owner of the hotel to stop complaining eventually—apparently _most_ shinobi guests wait until they're on a battlefield with plenty of destructible scenery to have their dramatic revelations—and Shirayuki helps it along by paying him for repairs.

"So, how much is left?" Obito asks.

"Enough for another three days." Shirayuki says, having counted out the ryou notes well out of his line of sight for some reason.

"...Where did you get the money, exactly?" Obito almost doesn't want to know.

The look Shirayuki gives him is enough for ten minutes of silence. When he starts talking again, it isn't about possible dead people.

"This may sound kind of stupid, childish, or whatever, but I want to go home." Obito says later, when they're shopping for extra sets of clothes. This little trading town isn't really that far from Konoha, which makes him think that Shirayuki at least understands homesickness, but it doesn't seem to have any memory of an Uchiha Obito. That suits him just fine. This world's Obito went Tobi and Obito can't spare any pity for him. The man has too many victims.

Speaking of which, it's probably better not to ask where Shirayuki got the money to buy their new equipment. He has an idea, but if she killed people for their possessions he doesn't want to think about them.

It's not that he's never done the same thing, but it doesn't feel like it's justifiable when the main problem is just a lack of money instead of because of a mission that required being in deep cover. That kind of thing is usually down to ANBU, but Obito remembers a few missions that went to shit and having to get his team out via extremely subtle genjutsu and more than a few stolen disguises.

By way of response, all she ever said was, "I landed in Amegakure."

He supposes that it's justified. Pain has all kinds of freaky detection ninjutsu around the place—who knows what he makes of youkai, given that they basically don't exist here? He doesn't really want to know how _she_ knows about Pain's techniques, though he'll probably end up picking her brains for details he can't remember, later.

As she hands him a pair of mirrored sunglasses that are almost shaped like his old goggles, Shirayuki says, "Are you sure you're ready for that?"

"Nope." Obito says flippantly. He puts the glasses on and looks in a mirror. He activates his Sharingan briefly, pleased to note that he can't see his eyes at all in his reflection, and realizes that Shirayuki is staring at him. He sighs. "Look, it'll be like stretching a scar. It'll hurt, but it'll help just as much." He hopes so, at least.

Shirayuki looks back at the vendor's stall and says, "I wouldn't know."

They don't say anything to each other for a while, even though Shirayuki ends up paying. Obito keeps his new shades on top of his head, where he's least likely to lose but most likely to forget them, and tries to get over the strange feeling of unreality. As they walk in the cooling night air, Obito checks over their purchases, just to be sure.

This place isn't Konoha—weapons are in astonishingly short supply, and he doesn't think there's an actual kunai within spitting distance of the entire town. It's fundamentally a civilian place, and he's not all that interested in scaring everyone half to death by busting out shinobi techniques just for the hell of it. But all the same, he feels a lot better than he did a few hours ago. He's almost brimming with nervous energy. His chakra reserves are about three-fourths of the way full and picking up quickly. It _feels _like a time to be optimistic.

It's almost as though he never died.

They end up sitting on a bench out by the river because the idea of being effectively confined back in that hotel room bugs Obito for reasons he can't explain. Shirayuki just kinda goes along with it. The water is soothing, after everything, and it gives him time to think about the (_probable_) present and the (_probable_) future and what it all means for them. Stopping the Juubi means stopping Tobi's plan, which could mean stopping _Tobi_, even though they weren't allowed to kill him. He's not sure how they're going to deal with him if they can't rip his stupid empty head off—hell, by fourteen Tobi had been strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Sensei and get away alive. Holding someone like that was pretty much impossible, even without Kamui.

Obito has no idea what he's going to do and it's driving him crazy. _Okay, deep breaths, this is not the time for a panic attack_…

"Try putting it into a mental checklist." Shirayuki says out of nowhere, and he blinks at her. His chakra levels are fine but apparently his brain has yet to get the memo. _Ugh_. "First: Do we need help?"

"If neither of us can kill him, I'd say yeah." Obito mutters into his clasped hands. "And the only place I can think of going is Konoha. Kiri's probably under Tobi's thumb, Iwa still hates everything, Suna's probably being used as puppets by Orochimaru, and I don't even know what the hell Kumo's problem is."

"Then we head to Konoha." Shirayuki says, as though it's that simple. Konohagakure is a _shinobi village_. They don't just let random shinobi in or out without a thorough grilling. Hell, they don't let _civilians_ in without going through a load of bureaucratic nonsense first. The only time that eases up a bit is when there's some kind of international event, like the Chuunin Exams, and Obito's not willing to wait that long and gamble on the idea that Orochimaru's invasion _won't_ fuck something up.

Still, there's something about the idea of screwing all of Tobi's plans over from the start that is really, really appealing. Maybe it's the revenge aspect.

Well, if he can't kill the guy, it's the next best thing.

"Once we're somewhere we can't be overheard, I'll tell you my half of the story." He glances at Shirayuki, but she's already up and walking away.

They pack up their things and head to Konoha in the morning.

* * *

Yeah, so getting an audience with the Hokage is a thing that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

As Obito predicted, Konoha is not really in the mood for unannounced visitors of the shinobi variety. It's never done well with unannounced visitors of _any _kind, since that sort of thing tends to involve a lot of dying, but he wonders if there is something specifically up with foreign policy today. Even if he technically isn't foreign and even more technically _is_.

The only reason he's not currently hanging by his ankles from the ceiling in one of Ibiki's cells is because Shirayuki literally tore her way through the walls not five minutes beforehand and got him down. He imagines that the chuunin that had been in the room is considering a new career choice, because even though he finds Shirayuki's raging mode kind of funny—glowing red eyes, hair everywhere like Kushina's used to be, claws raised and a persistent growling noise that made her sound a bit like a rockslide off in the distance—it's not something that the average shinobi deals with every day.

Obito is pretty sure he's desensitized. Daiyoukai? Hah! The prospect of being tortured to death for information? At least he gets to _die _at the end!

Not that he couldn't have gotten loose on his own—Kamui makes him one hell of an escape artist when he wants to be—but it's kind of interesting to watch Shirayuki's reactions. He's been put through anti-interrogation training before, just like every other shinobi chuunin on up, though he's not sure any of the techniques he's learned are really all that effective on the master of making people talk. Obito wouldn't put it past Ibiki to _also _know the counters to the counters to the interrogation methods he uses. It's his job. Shirayuki, on the other hand, isn't a shinobi or even the slightest bit human, and apparently the techniques taught even in Torture and Interrogation don't work on youkai. Must be the lack of a chakra system.

"I liked that wall," one of the chuunin intelligence specialists remarks.

Obito does not want to know why. He _doesn't_.

Shirayuki glances at the wreck of concrete and steel support beams. There are distinct claw-marks everywhere—apparently, it is impossible for a daiyoukai to do something as plebian as chip a nail. She opens her mouth to say something.

Well, since that was how they got _into_ this mess, Obito idly steps out of his bindings—_Kamui_—and says, "Hey, have you got a Yamanaka around? Inoichi would be best, if you want this to go fast and _without_ her busting through any more of the foundation." He's pretty sure Inoichi is still in Intelligence. If he isn't, then the timeline is fucked and causality makes no sense and Tobi is being even more of an asshole than usual.

Or, you know, they're going to have even more problems.

"Who is Yamanaka Inoichi?" Shirayuki asks him. At least her eyes aren't glowing anymore.

"He's a member of the Konoha Intelligence Division." Obito says, checking his wrists and ankles for bleeding. There hadn't been enough bandages to secure them before, though he thinks he's okay. At least, there's nothing a quick Shousen jutsu can't fix. "Specializes in mind-reading. I think he's…twelve years older than me."

"Would he know who you are?" Shirayuki asks. It seems that they're planning on ignoring the potentially-hostile interrogators. Hell, if Shirayuki managed to break the structural seals on the other room and the…three cells between there and here, there's really not a lot they can do to stop her. No one here is built for heavy combat, though Obito expects ANBU forces to make an appearance soon.

"Probably? That's not really the point—they can't get anything out of you, but a Yamanaka makes confirming who _I_ am a lot faster than thumbscrews." He ignores the way Shirayuki's eyebrows knit together for a second. He looks at his would-be interrogators instead. "So, we'll wait here. Just…get Inoichi, okay? Or some other Yamanaka who has the clearance for S-class secrets."

They end up getting Inoichi anyway. Thank the merciful kami it's not Fu—Obito is pretty sure he would have killed the man on the spot and told them to pick again, screw the consequences. He doesn't trust anyone from Root anywhere near his mind.

Obito is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the once-closed cell, attempting to organize his thoughts, when Inoichi arrives. Shirayuki is standing next to him, picking concrete out from under her claws. He's not sure what kind of picture they make, but it's probably weird as hell and maybe a bit funny in hindsight.

"Will this cause undue stress or harm?" Shirayuki asks Inoichi. Her tone is pretty much exactly the same as it ever is, but Obito figures she's concerned anyway.

"Not unless he resists." Inoichi replies, "Ready?"

"May as well get it over with." Obito says, cracking one eye open and looking up at Inoichi with the Sharingan active. He sees the other jounin blanch. "Bring it."

_It turns out that the inside of his mind kind of looks like a battlefield. The lonely howl of the wind is a backdrop to what sounds like the groans of dying men, and the ground below them is sticky with blood even though there are no bodies in sight. Huge Hashirama trees have been uprooted and apparently flung across the field. Everything smells like blood and death. Even the sky is an angry red, the moon a black orb in the sky—the inside of his mind has apparently decided that it needs to look like a particularly atmospheric Tsukuyomi._

_"Wow." Obito says, whistling. "I knew I was messed up, but this is worse than I thought."_

_"What in the world were you thinking of before this?" Inoichi asks. Oh, hey, there he is. Obito waves. Inoichi climbs down from the hill he apparently landed on and makes his way over to Obito. "Never mind." He scans Obito briefly, eyes appearing to flicker, and says, "You can't lie inside your own mind. So, you really are Uchiha Obito."_

_"__**An**__ Uchiha Obito." Obito says. "I know exactly what __**your **__Obito's been up to, and I'm not him."_

_"Obito has been dead for over a decade." Inoichi says it as though it's a test. So, he believes it's true, which isn't the same as a lie. This mind stuff is annoying._

_"Again, not quite true. He's still around." Obito says. "Only he goes by Tobi now, and I don't. The most I can say is that we're really two versions of the same person—he's native to this world's history, and I'm not." He clambers up onto one of the bloodstained hills, knowing that Inoichi will follow, and steps into a different world. He needs to get away from the Tobi side of him—the part of him that's aching for a chance to wrap his hands around Tobi's throat in revenge for the hell he was put through. No wonder this is a dead place._

_Odd, how the safest part of his mind looks like his and Rin's apartment. Or perhaps not. Even if he hasn't seen it in ages, hasn't even been able to catch a glimpse of __**his**__ Rin in over ten years, it still feels like home. Obito sits down heavily on the couch and gestures for Inoichi to take a seat. He does._

_And there, standing in the middle of the room, is a copy of him. Younger, more naïve, and probably a little bit more enthusiastic. He grins at them both. _

_"This is kind of what happened." Obito says. _

_The copy gives them a thumbs-up and splits into two. One slowly becomes identical to Obito, growing taller and gaining extra tomoe in his Sharingan. The grin wanes a bit over time, becoming a little less bright and a little more bittersweet, but it's still there._

_The other __**twists**__, losing limbs and an eye, and eventually resolves itself into Tobi's final appearance, mask and all. It really is too bad they can't kill him. No one else seems inclined to do it._

_"Me." Obito says, pointing at his mirror image. He points at the other. "Tobi. Can't say a whole lot more before discussing things with the Hokage."_

_Inoichi looks disturbed, though the expression is gone almost as soon as Obito notices. He turns to Obito and says, "This is going to cause a stir."_

_"Yeah, that's one thing I'm trying to __**avoid**__." Obito says seriously. "Tobi has all the same techniques I do and then some. If he finds out I'm around—or that someone with his variant on the Mangekyou Sharingan exists that __**isn't**__ Kakashi—he's gonna come looking. And the last two times he was in Konoha? Kyuubi attack and the Uchiha Massacre. I'm not looking forward to his finale."_

_"I'd like to be there when you inform the Hokage." Inoichi says, shaken. Obito doesn't blame him. It's not every day that even a shinobi gets slapped in the face with this many revelations. "I'll suggest that Ibiki attends as well."_

_Obito says, "I don't have a problem with it. You might want to tell Ibiki to stay away from Shira-chan, though. She's kind of important to this and I think she took the thumbscrews thing seriously."_

_"They were __**meant**__ to be serious." Inoichi says, confused. _

_"You know that and I know that, but I really don't want to give her ideas." Obito replies._

_"All right. We'll play it by ear, then."_

And then he's awake again.

"So, time to meet the Hokage yet?" Obito asks. Wow, he has a major crick in his neck. Staying still is definitely not his thing.

Inoichi exchanges a look with Ibiki, who seems to have entered the room while they were busy. Shirayuki is glancing at him from the corner of her eye, claws tapping idly but noticeably on the inside of her arm.

"Yes, I think that would be best." Inoichi says.

"Cool." Obito says. Then, a pause. "Say, where the hell are my sunglasses?"

* * *

It feels like he hasn't seen the Sandaime in a decade or more, which is true from the perspective of reliving his life over and over but less true when it comes to his life outside of the challenges. Hell, Sarutobi had shown up for Naruto's birthday not too long ago, and he seemed to be enjoying his retirement as long as Konohamaru wasn't trying to beg for extra training. And despite the years, Obito _did_ remember how the Sandaime Hokage always seemed to have a minute or two for the black sheep of the Uchiha clan.

It was more than his parents ever did, anyway.

Still, it feels kind of weird to be back in the Hokage's office and seeing Sarutobi and not Sensei there, doing paperwork with kage bunshin. Shirayuki is standing by the window and looking around curiously—she's never been inside the Hokage tower, even back home—and mostly seems interested in making sure that no one unexpected is listening in. Inoichi and Ibiki stand at attention to the side of the Hokage's desk. Obito's eyes keep darting to a photo on the wall—Sensei on his coronation day, some thirteen years ago—and making his mood plummet, but he can't help it. Tobi's the only reason Sensei and Kushina are dead.

It's amazing how Tobi always seems to do everything in his power to make the world a more miserable place.

Getting the details of his situation hammered out to the Hokage's satisfaction doesn't seem to require him to pay much attention, given the way no one's asked a question in the last ten minutes that Shirayuki can't answer instead, and Obito ends up staring out the window for a while until Shirayuki gives an almost inaudible growl of warning. He blinks back to attention.

Everyone's staring at him, and not in the "you have just made an ass of yourself" kind of way. "What?" Obito says, which he has to admit is not the most intelligent phrase in the world. Well, he's just gotten out of what feels like thirty years of genjutsu torture. He's pretty sure he can afford to appear a bit scatterbrained.

"What rank did you have in your world?" the Hokage asks. He's being astonishingly patient with this whole thing.

"I made jounin when I was seventeen." Obito says instantly. It hadn't been a simple thing, like Kakashi's promotion way back when—hell, he's almost certain that his promotion was as political as it was about his skill, which he definitely had enough of to go around. It was kind of weird to be the head of a clan while outranked (however temporarily) by everyone else on the clan council. On the other hand, remains the only time he's ever beaten Gai in a fight, which he is still absurdly proud of.

Sarutobi nods, apparently mostly to himself. "How would you feel about being reinstated? Not as Uchiha Obito, but as a new identity."

Obito swallows. "That…that'd make things easier, I think. But we'd have to keep the details as quiet as possible." Danzou's still alive, after all. He's not sure that Root indoctrination techniques _don't_ work on him, even now. At the Hokage's raised eyebrow, Obito elaborates, "Even barring the whole 'I really shouldn't exist' thing, I want to avoid letting _certain people_ have any idea that I know anything about them."

The Hokage puffs on his pipe. He's already heard a lot of it from Ibiki and Inoichi, and Shirayuki knows enough to fill in a few of the blanks. The rest is in Obito's head, and he really doesn't want to see it used by Danzou or Tobi, because it seems like everything gets back to those two eventually. "You'll have to attend sessions with Inoichi, Ibiki, and myself for the next few weeks."

"I can deal with that. Maybe next time my brain'll be in better shape." Though he doubts it—shaking off damage like that just doesn't _happen_. Obito sighs. "So, all that's left is coming up with a name and a cover story. Obviously, being an Uchiha is going to raise all the red flags ever, so that's not gonna work."

"Naoya." Shirayuki pipes up, and Obito blinks at her. Why does that sound so familiar…? Shirayuki continues, "Nariko-chan told me you had operated under the name Takagi Naoya for an undercover mission. I didn't think much of it at the time, but maybe slipping into an old identity—or name—will be easier than creating an entirely new one."

"And I guess if I have to explain my Sharingan, I'd just say I was an Uchiha bastard or something. Itachi couldn't have gotten _everyone _involved in the gene pool, no matter how closed-off the clan was." Obito muses. He honestly doesn't even hate Itachi—he has a very, very good idea of why the younger Uchiha made the decisions that he did, even if it all ended badly. He did the same thing, after all—though he'd been way more selective about it as Orihime. He shrugs. "Well, it's not like the clan treated me any better than a bastard son when they were alive." Is he just imagining it, or did he see the Hokage wince just a bit?

"You would have had to be on a very long-term mission for such a story to work and allow for your reinstated rank." Ibiki speaks for the first time since all of them arrived, making Obito blink at him. "You probably never joined ANBU, which would have been a convenient cover even if your attitude doesn't match up, but your Sharingan would have been useful in Torture and Interrogation."

…Well, there are worse things to do for a living, though Obito is hard-pressed to think of anything at the moment. "I volunteered once or twice before Momoiro joined up." Obito says after a moment. He scratches his cheek. "I wasn't really a whole lot of help when it came to the physical side of things, but there was a reason my student considered it—and not just because of Anko. It wasn't really my thing, but I did get called on a couple of times after that when things got tense."

"Did you and I work together often?" Inoichi asks.

"Not really." Obito replies. He shrugs again. "I think I was mostly called in when you were taking days off. I didn't really mind much—it kept Itachi out of it." It's somewhat depressing to realize how hard it is to juxtapose the pacifist Itachi Obito knows best with the S-class missing-nin that even other missing-nin avoid like the plague. And yet he knows they're roughly the same when it comes to their core convictions, which is _even more depressing_. He adds, "And no, Itachi never killed anyone in the clan in the world I came from. Madara—or someone like him, I guess—did it eight years early. Me, Itachi, and Sasuke were the only ones who made it out alive."

Shirayuki puts in, "This would be the same incident I referred to when describing how my family has acted in Konoha's defense in the past. Not your past, perhaps, but we have interfered before."

The Hokage nods. "Ibiki and Inoichi will prepare a dossier for you, and I will create the paperwork for your mission history. No one will trace the jounin interrogation specialist Takagi Naoya to the young Uchiha Obito unless you break cover yourself."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama." Except there's one more thing Obito has to ask for, and it's both for his sanity as well as mission security, even if it's going to hurt like hell. "But someone else needs to be in on this before I can…uh, take to the field as a normal jounin. Normal-ish."

Shirayuki's expression is completely unreadable. Obito wonders if she practices that look in front of a vanity mirror. A wisp of smoke curls around the Hokage's pipe and toward the rafters.

"Who do you have in mind, Naoya-kun?" the Hokage asks. The eyes under the brim of his hat are narrow and shrewd and for once Obito wishes he wasn't so transparent.

"Hatake Kakashi." Obito says firmly. "I can't keep him in the dark. Given what I have to work with—Shira-chan could tell you the details but she's been pretty quiet about it even to me—he's the only one who can actually take Tobi out when the time comes. And he was—_is_—my best friend."

"There's no guarantee Kakashi will reciprocate that kind of devotion." Ibiki says dryly.

Obito glares at Ibiki, Sharingan activating behind his shades. "That depends. Do _you_ know why he's always late?"

No one says anything for a moment.

"…I don't like the thought of too many people being in on this," says Inoichi, but quietly enough that Obito figures he wasn't really supposed to hear that anyway. Obito knows that Kakashi's tendency to talk to the memorial stone is part of the reason Tobi was able to find a way to cause the Kyuubi attack in the first, but like hell he's going to mention that to any of them now.

"In your own time." Sarutobi says, glancing at the crystal ball on his desk. Nothing shows up in it, but Obito doesn't doubt that the old God of Shinobi has a bunch of tricks he's never going to figure out.

"Shira-chan…" Obito begins, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. Might as well get people familiar with Shirayuki's brand of crazy. She's gonna be around for a while. "What do you think?"

"…If he's anything like I remember, there shouldn't be any problem." Shirayuki says, looking at the Hokage. He gives her a raised eyebrow in response. "My experience with dimensional travel wasn't anything like Obito's, but I learned enough."

"Hm. Well, you should probably be present when Ibiki and Inoichi attempt to learn more about the situation, whether you are a shinobi of Konoha or not. You have more invested in this than a Konoha-nin does, it seems. That said," the Sandaime continues, jolting Obito out of his thoughts, "I don't think I can just take you at your word when you say that you were a jounin-level shinobi. That kind of claim needs to be backed up."

"…uh, so…am I going to have to go through some kind of exhibition match?" Obito asks hesitantly. "I mean…oh _crap_. Sorry, Hokage-sama, I didn't mean that!"

The Hokage seems to grin from behind a sudden veil of smoke from his pipe. "You should have a chance to show your new comrades what you can do—in moderation, of course. Supposed Intelligence Division refugee or not, you _are_ expected to have sufficient combat skills to avoid being a liability whenever you may be asked to work in the field."

"Who will be attending?" Shirayuki says sharply, showing just the barest flash of fangs behind her lips and a flicker of a red glow in her eyes.

Obito wants to know exactly what she went through, and regrets not asking for about two seconds before returning to his own dilemma. This is, after all, _the Hokage_.

"Only those I would trust with my life," Sarutobi says.

"That's not much of an answer." Shirayuki replies blandly. Where the whites of her eyes ought to be, there's another flash of red light. Oh shit. "I know we haven't had a chance to talk about some of the details yet, but there are spies and traitors everywhere in the shinobi world." Shirayuki explains, "And we can't afford to lose the advantage of surprise. Any of us."

Just like that, the atmosphere in the room has gone from companionable to frigid in no time flat.

"The most prominent of them, at the moment, is the Root division of ANBU as headed by Shimura Danzou." Shirayuki says, folding her arms. Obito is suddenly very glad that they preemptively cleared this room. With both Shirayuki's youkai senses and Obito's Kamui and maybe Sarutobi's own privacy seals. "Not because of any plot against Konoha—he's loyal to the village, and so are we—but how he chooses to act on that loyalty…isn't great. His track record has shown that he's created more problems through his harsh methods than those same methods could possibly solve."

"We'll be covering this in detail when Inoichi and Ibiki return." The Hokage sighs. "But for now, concentrate on preparing for the match. Let us worry about information security."

Obito wants to curse everything in existence and especially his big mouth, but it seems like that's going to have to wait for tomorrow and _pain_.


	4. Exhibition Inhibitions

Technically, there's no such thing as trial by combat within the shinobi nations. It was also outlawed due to common sense within Byakko, which Shirayuki thinks is probably the best option for a species that prides itself on strength of arms and also claws, teeth, youki, and armor that runs the gamut from jaki to diamond-hard scales to barriers. It's quite possible that, in a contest of sheer suicidal stupidity, predatory youkai subspecies would easily run neck-and-neck with younger, less experienced shinobi.

Or maybe just Maito Gai.

There's no arena, thank goodness. The Chuunin Exam arena is a testament to the prosperity of Konoha as opposed to other shinobi villages and used for little else other than the requisite bloodletting between children. Shirayuki hates it, and while she's not comfortable with the new valley-based facility—it reminds her all too much of Otogakure or the Valley of the End—it's at least easier to control who sees what and if any information gets out. No one should be within several kilometers of the place, and there are a few sensor-type shinobi making sure of that. It even has security seals that render the area essentially invisible to unwanted spectators. She just hopes the Sandaime Hokage knows what he's doing. Pitting Obito-as-Naoya against Sharingan Kakashi is bound to be explosive.

She can't recognize most of the faces she sees, mainly because there aren't a lot of faces on display in the first place. ANBU are generally known more for their masks than their names, but Shirayuki had personally checked every one of the agents in the area for signs of Root tampering and found none. Root may be the secret police of Konoha, but their distinctive tongue seals mean that they carry the signature of their master for anyone with sufficient skill to detect. If she was a shinobi, limited by human senses and chakra, it may have been more difficult, but Shirayuki uses _her_ nose and her youjutsu scanning abilities instead, which are harder to fool. That said, she can recognize Tenzou by scent and Yuugao by her distinctive purple hair among the ANBU crowd, which is sufficient for now.

As for the rest of the shinobi in the crowd, she counts Sarutobi Asuma as well as Maito Gai as trustworthy despite not being overly involved in what's about to happen. The ever-coughing Hayate is standing near the door, along with Namiashi Raidou and Shiranui Genma. Shirayuki suspects that the only reason Yuugao isn't with them is because she's ANBU. Inoichi is standing with Shikaku and Chouza, completing the previous Ino-Shika-Chou trio, and Ibiki is joined by Tobitake Tonbo as well as a few other chuunin-ranked Intelligence Division agents. Mitarashi Anko is with them, though she's snacking on dango at the moment.

Shirayuki isn't exactly comfortable with the idea that this many people could be in on the secret if Obito or Kakashi blurt something out, and the Hokage put up sound-muffling seals near the edge of the arena at her request.

Obito still doesn't know who his opponent is, since he never even asked the Hokage for confirmation before rushing off to buy extra weapons and promptly crashing into exhausted sleep upon making it to the temporary apartment he shares with Shirayuki, at least until they can move into something either bigger or separate. Obito may be a little too excitable to last long without some kind of support, or else his long period of isolation within the trials has finally made him crack. He was gone by the time she woke up in the morning, which means that she's fairly certain he's probably still trying to prepare…something.

As for Kakashi, no one ever apparently got around to telling him that Naoya is Obito, which means that the rumor mill (and likely Root) was thoroughly stymied. Shirayuki thinks that he wouldn't be late if he understood the gravity of the situation, particularly if the reason for said tardiness was a morning spent staring at the memorial stone again. Old habits are hard to break, but there are limits.

And since both of them are late, she has to conclude that they are both idiots. It is two hours and forty-five minutes since the time when the match ought to have started.

Not for the first time, Shirayuki regrets the fact that she's left her books elsewhere. She knows that Obito and Kakashi are notoriously late, if for different reasons, but she has woefully underestimated their combined powers for frustrating schedules and those who keep to them. Reading _A Complete Prehistory of the Universe, Unabridged_ would be considerably less mind-numbing.

It doesn't help that the shinobi present have collectively decided to give her a wide berth, sans Ibiki and his friends. Though to be honest, _being Ibiki_ is probably enough to ensure a healthy personal bubble.

"Fifty ryou says neither of them show for another hour," says Anko from the back of bleachers. It's difficult to say that the stands here amount to more than metal struts for shinobi to cling to, though the three rows directly behind the Hokage at least have backing. No one but Anko uses them. Other than that, there are bare rock outcroppings, and the whole place takes on more of the appearance of a gigantic cage match the more Shirayuki thinks about it.

"A hundred says at least one of them does, just because"—and at this point, Genma is cut off by a puff of smoke and Kakashi's sudden entrance just to Gai's left.

"Yo." Kakashi says. To the unpracticed eye, he's utterly unrepentant and ignores her existence, but Shirayuki sees his sole gray-black eye focus on her—the stranger in the crowd—for the briefest moment and he says to the Hokage and the crowd, "I tried following Ibiki, but I got lost after I saw a bookstore with a signed copy of _Icha Icha_ and had to haggle with the shopkeeper. He wouldn't sell, by the way."

"Yes, yes," the Hokage says dismissively. "Nice of you to join us, Kakashi-kun."

Everyone ignores the brief, whispered argument between Genma and Anko about whether or not an incomplete sentence counts as a bet and who owes who money. Shirayuki slumps in her seat, planting her elbows on her knees and her chin on her intertwined fingers, while several people around her laugh and the tension in the room slowly ebbs. _Where is Obito?_

Then there's a sudden flare of chakra and a blue-black blur and Obito appears on top of the railing in front of Shirayuki's section of the bench. He's balanced on one foot and quickly plants the other before he falls off, bending over at the waist so he's nearly nose-to-nose with both Shirayuki and the Hokage. She thinks she might have had a conversation like this from, for example, someone standing further up a set of stairs, but Obito has to bend nearly in half to pull it off. "Sorry, Shira-chan, Hokage-sama, and everyone else. I thought I woke up in an alternate universe where north and south were reversed. I proved that wrong, though!"

Shirayuki stares at him, trying to decide between being wordlessly appalled or start laughing. At least the man's wearing the sunglasses she bought—this is about as unsubtle of a hint as anyone is getting, and with luck no one but Ibiki and the Ino-Shika-Chou trio are going to know anything about the Sharingan.

"Naoya-kun." The Hokage coughs, and Obito straightens, grinning. The Hokage clears his throat as Obito drops onto the bench next to Shirayuki, who has settled for a very quiet giggle. "Kakashi, Naoya, both of you should head into the arena now in order to begin the match."

Obito seems to freeze for a fraction of a second, looking at Kakashi from the other jounin's supposed blind side. Shirayuki sees him mouth, "oh, fuck," before jumping off the metal and making his way down to the river winding its way through this…valley, or canyon, all by bouncing from ledge to ledge.

Kakashi follows, more sedately, and so does about half of the crowd.

"Hokage-sama?" Shirayuki wants to be able to follow the fight more closely, though she can't interfere even if it looks like Obito may get badly hurt. It was a part of the rules.

The Hokage shrugs, so she leaves his side and follows the audience.

When she hits the ground well back from the river, even she can tell that Obito is _thrumming_ with tension. While he never did do the sensible thing and ask for at least the identity of his opponent, Shirayuki isn't sure that the Hokage would have told him even if he asked. Kakashi definitely doesn't know, pretty much solely because of the way this situation has been put together, so she supposes that it at least puts them on even footing.

Well, it would if Obito were as intelligent as Kakashi is. That remains something of a gap.

Though she smells him approach—it's the tobacco—Shirayuki still turns and bows to the Hokage when he lands next to her. It seems polite. After all, the Hokage is what Harry Houdini _wished_ he could be. The Hokage gives her a brief nod and then looks out at Kakashi and Obito, who have taken up directly opposing positions on each riverbank.

ANBU guards are everywhere, apparently to contain the fight.

The Hokage raises his arm and shouts, "BEGIN!"

Both Kakashi and Obito disappear. They aren't actually clashing, or even moving too fast to see, but it's clear that neither one wants to make the first obvious move.

"So, Shirayuki-kun, what can we expect from Naoya-kun?" the Hokage asks, since neither Obito nor Kakashi have reappeared yet.

Shirayuki keeps watching for something to happen. _There_—a glint in the trees. Possibly Obito? "…If you're talking about those charts in his file, I remember seeing one before." There's the slightest emphasis on the last word to remind Sarutobi Hiruzen of the larger situation at hand.

"If I remember correctly," Shirayuki continues quietly, "he scored a five on ninjutsu…"

* * *

If Kakashi were a chuunin, or even another jounin, he would have dismissed Takagi Naoya out of hand for being a clumsy idiot. There were quirky shinobi of every rank—he ought to know, since he was one of them—but it's unusual to meet a supposed member of Torture and Interrogation with such a blatant lack of tact, subtlety, or common sense. Sure, Takagi probably isn't a master interrogator or even particularly useful when it comes to just brute forcing the entire issue, but he's also apparently useful enough that the Hokage wanted to assess him privately, independent of any public examination. Kakashi isn't sure what would make a man who spent his entire shinobi career as a part of T and I decide to leave it, and he isn't sure he wants to know.

If he does well, Takagi might be placed as high as jounin. Ultimately, that's not Kakashi's decision and he leaves the Hokage to it without complaint. Kakashi mostly wants to know why the Hokage wanted _him_ to be the black ops upstart's opponent for this.

Particularly because this idiot seems bent on pissing him off and is doing disturbingly well at it. He's not sure if the late excuse routine is something that he copied just to be annoying, but Kakashi tucks his copy of _Icha Icha Paradise_ away and straightens his headband regardless.

Takagi stands across the river, checking and rechecking his flak jacket's pockets for something or other. He's shorter than Kakashi by about six centimeters, with scarred hands covered partially by armored gauntlets and his eyes hidden by the wide reflective lenses of his shades. His hair is a spiky mass of black that leads into a low ponytail. He has an annoyingly familiar tendency to shift from foot to foot, and his grin has the same twist that Kakashi remembers on someone else.

He has no idea what Takagi's friends in Torture and Interrogation know about Obito, even if some of them were in the same age cohort, but he isn't about to let this pass.

When the Hokage gives the signal, though, Takagi and Kakashi both head for cover in anticipation of an attack of some kind. Kakashi narrows his eyes—he thought that Takagi would be a bit more aggressive, but maybe that nervous fidgeting hadn't been an act. He's not sure if his reputation scared the man off or not.

A fireball the size of a house comes screaming down at him a second later and Kakashi bolts down the face of the valley's many cliffs to avoid it. The way the fireball is angled, the turn of speed…

_Got you_. He spots Takagi in a fraction of a second with his Sharingan, clinging to the underside of a jutting rock behind a simple camouflage genjutsu on the opposite side of the arena, and surges after him with one hand sparking in the initial—but not deadly—form of the Chidori. A second fireball follows, but this one is smaller and as Kakashi watches he sees the whole thing spin and twist into a deadly spiraling monster, more heat bloom than open flame, and Kakashi has to dismiss the Chidori in order to bring up Suiton: Suiryuudan instead to avoid being fried.

The water dragon shoots upward, followed by a second, then a third, and each one forces the unnamed technique to spend more of its chakra just to evaporate the water and deal with the force behind them. Fire techniques are not particularly well-known for staying power.

He definitely wants to know how Takagi mastered the Uchiha clan's old signature technique, though.

Kakashi leaps back, seeing the deadly coils of shinobi-grade wire fly through the air like a fisherman's line, and starts on his own strategy. Fire is already running along the length of the wire, even as Takagi leaps from place to place and yanks on the coils like a puppeteer. The shuriken-weighted lines slash into the rock at odd angles, anchoring the web of flames, and Kakashi is reluctantly impressed. Takagi seems to want to outrange him, given the area-effect fire jutsu and the wires to box him in.

_Mizu Bunshin no Jutsu! Kawarimi!_

But he won't be able to keep Kakashi penned in. Sure, this rapid transition between techniques is going to be a pain and with his Sharingan active it's probably going to mean a day off for chakra exhaustion, but he's going to see Takagi beaten down by the end of today, make no mistake.

_Doton: Moguragakure no Jutsu!_

Thankfully, he gets underground before it starts raining flaming metal. He's never seen that jutsu before, but he knows he's going to try and copy it if Takagi ever uses it again.

"Sup, Hatake-san?" That voice is _way too close_.

_Oh, what the f—_

* * *

"…He also may know a lot more about Kakashi-san than Kakashi-san does about him." Shirayuki murmurs, watching as the pair of jounin clash again and again across the surface of the water. "And his taijutsu score was a solid four, where genjutsu is a five—I think it was rated so highly because of his kekkei genkai and not because of any particular practice on his part."

Obito is as fast as Kakashi, if not slightly faster, though his style is more of a loose-limbed mishmash of every stance and movement he's ever copied or learned than Kakashi's extremely pragmatic, streamlined take. Obito is using oversized shuriken, deployed from a supply scroll in one of his pockets, and Kakashi's mainstay seems to be the ever-present kunai and taijutsu combination. Sparks fly every time their weapons meet, though the weight of Obito's giant shuriken seem to be forcing Kakashi's kunai back despite the fact that both men have roughly the same physical strength.

Even as they watch, though, Obito uses his marginally superior reaction time to avoid a leg sweep from Kakashi and bounce across the surface of the river, using the force of the kick as momentum. Obito's pair of Sharingan eyes are giving him a fraction of a moment's advantage, such that it is, and Shirayuki supposes that he must have been freakishly fast by human standards to keep up with his sensei and Kakashi at all.

Kakashi recovers instantly, flinging the kunai upward and his hands blurring through a set of seals. He catches the kunai on the way down, hands glowing with white chakra, and Obito immediately makes a noise of startled surprise before launching himself off the water's surface with an overpowered single back handspring as the lightning surges down Kakashi's legs and into the water.

Kakashi, as a master of his lightning-aligned chakra nature, is unharmed despite the voltage. Obito has to scramble out of the way to avoid partial paralysis.

And then Obito's hands blur right next to his chest, with the angle probably preventing Kakashi from seeing the movements clearly, and then he's gone. Or rather, Kakashi and the Hokage act like he disappeared. Shirayuki still sees Obito land and tunnel into a cliff with the entrance vanishing behind him, though no one else seems to notice at all.

"…Genjutsu." Shirayuki says after a moment, frowning. "And one so strong that even the Sharingan can't automatically dispel it. I guessed wrong."

"Naoya-kun never displayed these abilities before," the Hokage comments.

"Naoya-kun would also be the first to say that he was a terrible chuunin." Shirayuki replies, watching as Kakashi summons two of his ninken to search after dispelling the genjutsu. Even a genjutsu strong enough to thwart him for a moment isn't enough to keep him distracted for much longer than that. The Tsukuyomi would put him down, possibly permanently, but none of Obito's genjutsu short of it would work and Obito is not the kind of person to risk something like that on his best friend. "His…experiences have forced him to grow stronger or die. And he died a lot."

The Hokage looks slightly troubled. "How much has he grown?"

"HEY, ASSHOLE!" Obito bursts from the ground, a dozen kunai with small paper bombs attached to the rings on the handles. He flings them, and Shirayuki sees that the ends of the kunai have also been tied with ninja wire for steering. "TAKE _THIS_!"

"Not much, in some ways." Shirayuki says to the Hokage, _sotto voce_.

When the bombs explode, well before Kakashi's dogs can leap up and bite his nose off or Kakashi can fling a kunai at him, there's a _whoomph_ and Shirayuki's sinuses feel like they catch fire.

She can vaguely hear canine whining and the Hokage's comment about peppermint bombs, but she's a little too busy trying not to cry. Obito ought to have remembered that scent bombs were _not _the best idea when the audience also had enhanced sensory capabilities. Some of the other shinobi are complaining and Kakashi actually _flinches_.

Oh hey there's the ground.

When she gets up—or whenever her brain starts to work again—she's going to _strangle_ him.

* * *

Obito knows he's in trouble.

Oh, not because Kakashi is too strong to fight (though he kind of is), and not because Shirayuki just apparently succumbed to a serious case of the vapors (though that's a bad thing). It has less to do with any of the people around him than it does with just his own issues.

One: If he had the slightest ability to outdo Kakashi without using the Mangekyou Sharingan, he would. Only he doesn't, for two big reasons: One, he's terrified that there _might_ be a chance Kakashi's Sharingan would undergo a kind of sympathetic activation of Kamui when Obito knows that Kakashi doesn't have the chakra capacity for it. It might put him in a coma or worst. The second reason is that he can't afford to let anyone but the Hokage and his _absolutely trusted_ advisors see Kamui in action. While all of the counters to his Kamui would work the same way on Tobi's, he's not willing to take risks with the chance that either Tobi would find out and terminate the complication to his plan, or that Danzou would find out and just straight-up kill him for being an Uchiha.

Two: He doesn't have the chakra capacity for this shit. He might have, if he'd been given a week off to recover from the whole repeated dying thing and test his limits properly, but he's in it with both feet now and he knows he's screwed. Kakashi's endurance may be effectively halved with his implanted Sharingan, but he's got better control than Obito does and has had thirteen years to learn how to compensate for it.

Okay, so maybe it'd have been way simpler and easier if he'd just been asked to fight, say, Asuma, with no witnesses except for the Hokage. That's just not how politics work, though.

Still, Kakashi's his opponent now, and he has to put on a good show before he inevitably either gets his ass kicked or has to forfeit. Probably both, in that order.

Might as well have fun with it.

_Mogura Tataki no Jutsu, go!_

It is quite possibly Tobi's stupidest technique, but chasing Kakashi around like a mole from hell and hitting him with a stick is kind of one of Obito's lesser goals in life. Normally, Kakashi might have brought his ninken out to play and possibly rip his opponent's arms off, but with the scent bombs still going strong, he can't afford to. A Fuuton jutsu would clear the air, but it wouldn't pull the peppermint oil out of the ground or the water, and none of Kakashi's hounds were breeds designed to scent things on the wind.

Also, a Katon jutsu was just an unspeakably bad idea.

Obito is glad that, of the two of them, he's the more visually-oriented. Not that it'll help him much.

Kakashi's hand seals are actually faster than Obito's and definitely just the faction more streamlined to make this whole process suck just a bit more.

_Aaaaaand that's…oh fuck._

He should have figured that Kakashi would break out a Chidori variant when his opponent was too much of a pain in the ass. The fact that he chooses the Raijuu Hashiri no Jutsu makes Obito want to kill him for being such a sore loser.

He's fully aware it applies to him, too.

As the lightning beasts come running right for him, Obito's hands flash through the Rat, Rabbit, and Dog seals. Then he breathes in, in a rush, and exhales the multi-shot air blasts that make up Fuuton: Shinkūgyoku. He aims for the beasts, because there's no way he's willing to kill Kakashi, and the entire battlefield seems to explode when their techniques clash and Kakashi's lightning chakra _explodes_. Dirt and water and much more fly everywhere, and some guy in the audience shrieks as a chunk of rock almost decapitates him.

And Obito knows he's fatally distracted even before a blade comes to rest against the underside of his jaw. He _could_ use Kamui to get away, but he has no intention of letting anyone see it and live if he can avoid it. He doesn't want to see what could happen if it gets out, and he doesn't want anyone to be reduced to a screaming wreck for information on it.

Obito exhales in a laugh. "Got me, Hatake-san."

Kakashi withdraws the kunai.

Obito turns to face him and grins, rubbing the back of his head. "So, what do you think?"

"Hm? Oh, I just met you." Kakashi says mildly, though his single visible gray-black eye narrows. "But I have to say, given the first impression you made… I think I hate you."

Well, shit.

09090

Obito bounds back over to the Hokage and his companion, fairly cheerfully despite losing the bout and the fact that Kakashi had _not_ come away with a good impression. He says, "Shira-chan, your turn."

"Why?" Shirayuki asks. She managed to quell her reaction to the peppermint oil, barely, by sticking her face into the water and washing some of it out, but her eyes are still reddened and her nose is still running. Badly.

"Well, what if you want to be a chuunin later?" Obito suggests.

She gives him a flat look. "_No_, Naoya. I am not at all qualified for it."

"But Shira-chaaaaaaaaan…" Obito whines. An adult and a jounin and possible Hokage candidate (once upon a time) _whined_.

Shirayuki spends a very private and very quiet moment mourning anything like dignity in the immediate area, for it has died a lonely and unexpected death. She would pick Obito out of a lineup as the primary suspect and swear on her grandfather's grave that he had killed it.

"Who would her opponent be, Naoya-kun?" the Hokage asks.

"Well, since she has zero skill at ninjutsu or genjutsu, I'd say Gai." Obito says easily, as though he hadn't planned something like that all along.

Shirayuki wants to strangle him.

Obito proceeds to make the entire scenario more likely by cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting up at the stands, "HEY, MAITO-SAN, WE NEED SOMEONE WITH LOADS OF ENERGY FOR THE NEXT ROUND!"

_You utter bastard_, Shirayuki thinks.

"WHO IS TO BE MY OPPONENT, TAKAGI-KUN?" Gai booms, making Shirayuki wonder if he and Obito had been friends in a previous life she was not aware of. Their sheer over-enthusiasm is different, yet she feels her annoyance levels building all the same.

"Shira-chan, of course!" Obito grins. Gai grins back. There is a brief light show.

"When I survive this, I will kill you." Shirayuki informs Obito with a tone like ice, though the effect is ruined by the fact that she is still recovering from the peppermint bombs.

"Aw, you know I'm too lovable to die." Obito teases.

"If fleas were lovable, it doesn't make them any less _irritating_."

"And you'd know, wouldn't you?"

"Enough!" says the Hokage. "Are you willing to participate in an exhibition match, Shirayuki-kun?"

Shirayuki wants to say no, that she would rather sabotage Obito first and fail her mission than sharpen her claws on an uninvolved human. But she knows that shinobi, in some ways, value strength in a possible ally more than unsubstantiated reassurances of a common goal, and understands. Gai will not try to kill her, and she will not try to kill him. That is the plan, though she worries anyway.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Shirayuki says, because she has no choice.

Obito looks surprised that she accepted, though the expression is gone almost instantly. A grin replaces it. "Knew you were a team player, Shira-chan."

Shirayuki shoots him a slit-eyed glare and wordlessly walks out toward where Gai has already begun his pre-battle posturing. She avoids the river, because for all of her blessings the ability to walk on water was never one of them, and stands on the shore with her arms crossed. She has arm guards, but she doesn't exactly trust their construction and would rather trust the strength of her youki under her skin. Aside from her claws and teeth, she is weaponless.

"I have not had a chance to exchange proper greetings with you, kunoichi-san!" Gai shouts. "I am Maito Gai, the Green Beast of Konoha!"

Shirayuki inclines her head.

Obito cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, "She's Shira-chan, but her full name's like Shirayuki-ojousama or something stupidly long!"

"Thank you for the introduction, Naoya-kun, but it's not necessary." Shirayuki replies. Her eyes never leave Gai, who she knows has the strength to bring most human opponents down with startling ease.

"Ah, so you are a high-born lady with the dream of becoming a Konoha kunoichi? How admirable!" Gai's enthusiasm is somewhat off-putting. "While I am not known for going easy on opponents, I will not try to dissuade you from achieving your most Youthful dream!"

"You tell her, man!" Obito says, and Shirayuki glances back in time to see Kakashi give him a brief, horrified look.

Shirayuki sighs inwardly and brings her arms up into a defensive pose.

"BEGIN!"

Gai moves like lightning, or else a raijuu. She can see the blow coming, but nonetheless chooses to block rather than dodge.

This is a mistake.

09090

As Shirayuki is smashed across the arena like a toy, crashing into a cliff and collapsing the stone with the momentum of Gai's kick and the apparent durability of her body, Obito turns to the Hokage and says, "Y'know, I don't think she's ever fought anyone like Gai before." As Shirayuki levers herself out of the crater and launches herself after Gai, he continues, "But I'm sure she'll be fine."

"How long have you known her, Naoya-kun?" the Hokage asks.

"What, total?" Obito scratches his chin. "Well, we were in the same city for like three years, but we didn't exactly talk outside of formal meet-and-greet events. I only really started talking to her about two days ago."

Technically, this is true, but he can't really say as much as he would like to be able to. The Hokage is the one he grew up with, but in his mind Sensei is the only one he'll ever be truly at home with. It's also hard to explain the entire situation with the youkai assistance Konoha has gotten in his home world, particularly without giving away some major secrets on all sides. Sure, Shirayuki is the only youkai in this world that they've seen, but that doesn't mean Obito is suddenly going to be slinging S-class secrets everywhere just because they're far away from potential consequences. They're _not _far enough from prying eyes, and probably never will be.

"Hm. So you're vouching for a girl you barely know?" Kakashi muses.

"I know her family pretty well." Obito says. "And they've never given me any real reason to worry."

Well, except for the time when Nariko had been stabbed about six times in the chest to literally no effect. _That_ had been freaky, and he's pretty sure that Shirayuki won't allow the same thing to happen to her.

Speaking of which, Gai careens through the air about a second later, meeting Shirayuki in midair with his kick against her cross-block, and she grabs his foot to send him hurtling off toward the audience. Gai spins, finding footing right about Anko's head, and shoots back toward his opponent.

Shirayuki, for her part, hasn't actually moved. She's suspended in midair with one clawed hand extended, and it takes everyone a moment to realize that _this is not normal_. There's a lot of disbelieving muttering, though no one has started shouting yet. Ibiki just looks intrigued.

"She can _fly_." Kakashi says in an astoundingly flat voice.

"Apparently so," the Hokage muses, probably already thinking of missions to utilize the female daiyoukai's unique ability.

"Huh. Didn't know she could do that, though I guess it makes sense." Obito says, because after seeing Nariko's mother Souten shoot across the sky over Konoha with _flaming wheels tied to her ankles_, he's pretty sure he's seen everything. "That probably explains how she got me across the country so quickly."

Shirayuki is now, more or less, a floating target. Obito is pretty sure that she can't fly especially fast in comparison to her ground speed, but the ability to fly at all without the use of summoned animals or unique chakra (or chakra at all, really) puts her into her own category. The only other comparable techniques were either Konan's use of paper manipulation to form wings, or the Sandaime Tsuchikage's ability as a function of his Jinton kekkei touta.

Her armguards are completely destroyed—Gai hits harder than any reasonably-priced shinobi armor can take without shattering or tearing, and neither of them really even look winded. Other than that, she looks a little battered and her civilian-made clothes aren't standing up to the beating as well as a shinobi uniform would, but it's better than anyone expected.

Gai, of course, is grinning. "Now you show your true self, Shirayuki-san! How Unyouthful of you to hide such a wonderful technique!"

Shirayuki's eyes narrow.

Gai will be able to bounce her around the arena half a dozen more times if he wants, but he won't really make any progress other than giving her a new layer of dust and one hell of a shopping list. She isn't even bleeding.

Granted, Gai isn't either.

"I think she's trying to remember why she's _not_ gonna kill him for ruining her dress." Obito says cheerfully.

"I think I've seen enough to make my decision." The Hokage removes the pipe from his mouth and shouts, "ENOUGH!"

Gai comes crashing to a halt, since he was halfway into the air when the Hokage's order registers in his brain. Shirayuki catches him by the hand and idly drifts back down to ground level, as if in no hurry whatsoever, and they both arrive in time to hear the Hokage's judgment.

"Takagi Naoya, you have the opportunity to join Konoha's military as a special jounin, with full jounin status pending a more complete review after ten successfully completed missions and full discharge from the ranks of Torture and Interrogation." Sarutobi says calmly, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

Obito bows deeply. "Thank you, Hokage-sama."

"Shirayuki," the Hokage goes on, "our previous conversations have established enough for me to know that you will not and likely never will be a true shinobi of Konoha. This fight proves that you have the skill to do so, if you wish, but you lack loyalty or conviction."

Shirayuki bows as well, expression unreadable.

"That said, you may stay on retainer as a civilian consultant," the Hokage says. "We'll discuss more details in private. Now, come along. You too, Naoya-kun."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." Shirayuki replies.

"Also, Kakashi, this concerns you as well." The Hokage ignores Kakashi's brief annoyed expression and walks off.

The crowd disperses as soon as the four of them disappear.

* * *

So while Obito would normally be in some kind of a good mood upon meeting his best friend again, he isn't this time.

He's a bit distracted by the fact that his alternate-universe best friend is looking at him like a combination of "enemy shinobi" and "horrible prank." So he does something about it, though the "something" is possibly not the smartest or most sensitive option. He grins and says, "Miss me, Kakashi?"

Kakashi looks from him to the Hokage and says flatly, "That isn't Obito."

Obito glares at him. This is familiar, in a kind of horrible way. Kakashi always knows how to piss him off, even if it's not on purpose. "Excuse me? Thanks for the warm welcome, asshole."

"You're correct, Kakashi," the Hokage says calmly, totally ignoring Obito's indignation. At this point, it's hard to say that much of anything will throw the old man off his game. "Technically, the Uchiha Obito whose eye you have is not in this room. However, _Takagi Naoya_ is the identity that this Obito has chosen for as long as he's with us—he's not from our reality, Kakashi-kun." Kakashi looks downright poleaxed, though Obito can only tell because he's known the man for so long. "He's as real as you or I, but with different life experiences than you would remember."

"How is this possible?" Kakashi demands, sole visible eye narrowed to a dark gray slit. Obito deactivates his Sharingan and pushes his shades up onto his head. Glaring with the Sharingan is such overkill. If Kakashi's not going to, he won't either.

Shirayuki raises her hand. The Hokage nods and she says, "That would be my fault. We are stranded in this version of history until Naoya-kun and I complete our mission."

"And what mission is that?" Kakashi bites off each word, eye never leaving Obito's face. Obito doesn't even need to look to know that Shirayuki is getting annoyed just because everyone else is. Thank the merciful kami that Inoichi and Ibiki went to go fill out the paperwork instead. At least the Hokage is a patient audience.

"Our task is to prevent the revival of the Juubi permanently, and by any means possible." Shirayuki replies evenly. There is a general silence at that.

Kakashi straightens from his combat-ready stance and Obito copies him. They don't need to start their new acquaintance with mutual attempted murder, though Obito's seen Naruto remain friends with people after that. That kid is something special.

"Naoya-kun guessed—accurately, I might add—that he would not be able to maintain his cover if you were not made aware," the Hokage says. He shakes his head. "I had hoped that you would be able to get along better than this."

"We both have difficult personalities, Hokage-sama." Obito says, still distracted with his staring contest with Kakashi. They're always more serious for doujutsu-users. "And if _someone_ doesn't give up on his goddamn guilt complex over my not-death, I'm going to beat the stupid out of him."

"As if you could, loser." Kakashi responds without thinking, then freezes. Okay, _now_ he's looking stunned. It's almost as though the old exchange works like a code.

"HAH!" Obito crows triumphantly. "Made you say it!"

Shirayuki exchanges a glance with the Hokage, which Obito pointedly ignores.

"Anyway, Bakakashi," Obito continues, because he refuses to back down when his friend-once-rival is already on his back foot, "what have you been up to lately?"

"I joined ANBU, made captain, and retired." Kakashi says mildly. His lazy slouch is back, which is interesting because his chakra pressure hasn't decreased one bit. Kakashi has so many layers of apparent stupidity—like an onion, really—that even Obito isn't sure how far down all of it goes. "You know, there's not a lot of time to pick on a bunch of hysterical hormonal brats in between ANBU missions."

"You haven't been in ANBU for years." Obito argues. "Stop making things up. You just keep failing the poor brats."

Kakashi's eye flicks over to Shirayuki, who says, "He knows everything that has transpired in this timeline since his supposed death, if from an unusual perspective. You can tell him what you wish—very little will actually surprise him."

"And you?" Kakashi says dryly, since it's obvious that Shirayuki's sticking around for the foreseeable future.

"I know what he tells me and some information he does not." Shirayuki says. "But I'm not a shinobi and never will be."

"This is a really fancy way of saying that she doesn't care one bit what I do." Obito adds. He's feeling better about this already. "Anyway, better brief you on the cover story before we leave…"

When the dossier finally arrives, the only thing Kakashi objects to is the idea that Obito could stand to work in Torture and Interrogation, but both of them end up memorizing it. Obito and Shirayuki are given the keys to an apartment that's been set up for their use, though only until they can find a better place and cover every inch of it with security seals and traps, and Obito is finally given time to breathe.

He ends up having nightmares when he finally collapses from exhaustion at two in the morning.

* * *

A/N: Databook stats I totally made up, for those who care.

**Obito**:

Ninjutsu: 5

Taijutsu: 4

Genjutsu: 5

Intelligence: 3.5

Strength: 3.5

Speed: 5

Stamina: 4

Hand seals: 4.5

Total: 34.5 (Equal to Kakashi in the third databook.)

* * *

**Shirayuki:**

Ninjutsu: 0

Taijutsu: 3.5

Genjutsu: 0

Intelligence: 5

Strength: 5

Speed: 5

Stamina: 0

Hand seals: 0

Total: 18.5 (worse than some genin)


End file.
